Game Magister
by esama
Summary: After his mother's death, Yugi returns to Domino to claim the inheritance his grandfather left to him. He soon realises it to be more than just an estate. Quite a bit more. AU
1. I Game Shop

**Game Magister  
I chapter  
Game Shop**

Yugi stared silently out of the train's window, listening to the soft hum of the train and the quiet chatter of the others in it. As the sceneries shifted and changed before his eyes, fields and rivers and lakes flashing by, he thought about his destination. He had been thinking about it a lot in the last few days - ever since his mother had died.

Domino. It was a strange after years and years of avoiding that word, it would now determine his future. Not that he had avoided the word at his own volition - it just had been a taboo in their house for as long as his mother had lived. Yugi wasn't sure why, though. He suspected that it had something to do with his grandfather - who in general had been another taboo in their house.

After staring out of the window for a while, Yugi turned his eyes down to his lap. There rested a black folder, filled with information of things he hadn't thought of before the last week - his past among other things. In the said folder he had all the letters his grandfather had sent to him and his mother - letters his mother had never opened. In the folder there were pictures of time before he and his mother had moved to Tokyo - pictures she had hid from him for years, pictures he had only found after her death. There were the copies of his grandfather's will - which had been delivered to his mother long ago, which his mother hadn't opened.

Yugi sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. He had read through the letters, leafed through the pictures, and read the will many times. It was still hard for him to believe that his grandfather had died when he had been fifteen, and his mother had never told him. Heck, he hadn't even been sure if he had had a grandfather in the first place. Whatever rift there had been between his mother and grandfather, it had been enough for her to try and deny the old man's existence from him. And she had done one heck of a job.

But she wasn't there to pull veils and curtains before his eyes anymore. She had died - quickly and hopefully painlessly - leaving these loose ends into Yugi's hand. And he, unable to tie them, would have to follow them into where they originated from.

Opening his eyes, Yugi flipped open the folder. Paper clips marked important parts and one of them marked his destination and the reason why it was his destination. Another thing his mother hadn't told him - though it was a possibility that she had never known since she hadn't even glanced at the will - was that his grandfather had left _all_ his worldly possessions to Yugi. This included an estate and entire building in Domino. All which had been sitting empty for two years thanks to his mother's grudges.

Not that Yugi blamed her. He loved her and trusted that she had had her reasons. He only wished that she could've spoken about these things even once before her untimely death. Sure, he wasn't an adult but he was old enough to take care of himself. Whatever happened in the past, he was sure he was mature enough to understand.

_'Though… who knows? Mom thought me as her baby until the end,'_ Yugi smiled to himself. He pulled sheet of paper from underneath the others and looked at it thoughtfully. There was a badly scanned black-and-white photograph in the paper along with written information about the estate and the building in the said estate, both he had owned for two years now.

Yugi frowned. When he had first heard about the building, he had been told that it was a game shop. His first thought had been one of those places with automatic doors, large windows, glaring artificial lights and colourful advertisements where they sold video games and such. His grandfather store, how ever, had been a bit… different.

The house was rather large traditional Japanese house with two floors. The semi large estate in which it stood was surrounded by high wooden walls, and most of the estate was covered by very Japanese garden. In the picture the garden looked well kept, but the picture was two years old. Yugi doubted the real thing looked as good as it did in the picture. The game shop itself was in the first floor while the second floor was reserved for living - that's where his grandfather had lived.

Why and how could anyone sell games in such a place, Yugi had no idea. The place certainly looked nothing like game shop, making him wonder if his grandfather had had any customers at all. However it was, it was all his now.

Yugi pursed his lips while leaning his elbow to the hand rest of his seat. Upon her death, his mother had left him bit of money - most which she had been saving for when he would attend to some college. It would've been enough to get Yugi to his feet in Tokyo, but when he had found about the inheritance he had gotten from his grandfather, he had chosen Domino over Tokyo. Though it wasn't solely because of the estate - the estate and the building wasn't all he had gotten from Sugoroku Mutou. He had also gotten enough money to consider himself rich - filthy rich. He could've stayed in Tokyo, living an easy life… but he had felt guilty. His grandfather had left so much to him; it was only fair that he would take care of what he had been given so generously.

He sighed and closed the folder. _'I wonder if mom ever felt guilty. She probably knew that the place was empty in Domino, uncared for. Grandfather didn't have any other relatives but us… And still she never even looked at the will.'_ It made him all the more curious to know what had made the two fall apart like they apparently had. _'It feels a bit like I'm picking after them right now. I guess I am, in a way.'_

The speakers in the train clicked on and a female voice informed the passengers that they would soon be arriving to Domino. The voice also reminded them to pick their luggage. Yugi snorted softly, glancing at his luggage. Only thing he had with him was a backpack. Rest of his possessions - which included all his mother's old possessions as well - would be following him to Domino few days behind him.

After pushing the folder to his backpack, Yugi waited patiently for the train to come to its destination. The sceneries outside changed into city view, and curiously he took in the Domino city. _'How modern,_' he mused to himself while looking at the tall buildings and reflective skyscrapers. According to what he had read, Domino was fairly new city - but it had grown out of a very old village. Hints of the village still remained in the outskirts of the city - where his estate was - but it was a very minute part of the city.

Slowly the train pulled to a very modern station, and slowly rolled to a halt. After waiting for the other passages to get out of the way, Yugi slowly made his way out of the train and to the train station. Looking around for a moment, Yugi headed away from the platform, through the station and then out to the front. There he saw, much to his relief, a line of cabs waiting for passengers.

"Excuse me, could you take me… here?" Yugi asked from one of the drivers, pulling out a piece of paper where he had written the address of his grandfather's estate. After giving him a surprised look, the driver nodded. Soon after, Yugi was driven away from the station.

"Here to visit someone?" the driver asked as they quickly got stuck in traffic.

Checking his cell phone to see what the time was, Yugi sighed. Just his luck to be stuck in afternoon traffic. "Moving in, actually," he answered, folding the flip phone and pushing it back to his pocket.

"Moving in… to the address I'm taking you?" the driver seemed surprised, looking at him through the rear mirror. He looked suspicious somehow. "Really?"

"Yes. Is there something wrong with that?" Yugi asked calmly.

"Well… that's a very wealthy neighbourhood. _Very_ very wealthy."

"So I've read," Yugi murmured. What he had read about the area where his grandfather had lived, the prices of the estates there were… well, very pricy. You had to be a near millionaire to even rent a place there, not to even mention about owning one. It was a bit strange to even think about living in such a place, but to also know that he could buy at least two other estates like the one he owned with the money his grandfather had left him.

To be rich after being raised in mediocre wealth… it was strange thought. He had always had what he had needed when he had been living with his mother - she had been a hard working woman so they hadn't been poor. But they hadn't been exactly wealthy either. That had been by choice, though. From the letters Yugi gathered that his grandfather would've been more than willing to support Yugi's mother, she just hadn't accepted it.

"You're a…. high school student?" the driver asked rather awkwardly.

"Yeah," Yugi nodded, looking out of the car window. _'Transferring in my final year, too. How fun. Though, it's not like I had anything holding me back in __Tokyo.'_ He sighed heavily.

It seemed that the driver took his heavy sigh as sign of annoyance, because he didn't try to make small talk after it. Eventually the taxi made it through the traffic and made its way through the city. As they approached the outskirts, the houses got smaller and less grand, but no less fancy. Yugi had a feeling that he was being taken through the nicer neighbourhoods - and maybe even the longer way - but it didn't matter. It gave him a good view of the city he was going to live in anyway.

Then they came to the parts where once a village had been. The houses started look less modern and more traditional, until the taxi was driving on solely traditional neighbourhood. Yugi had read that the older areas of Domino were well kept and wealthy, but seeing it was different. Left and right he saw nothing but traditional houses and traditional gardens, all in perfect shape. It made him wonder if people in these areas wore traditional clothing as well.

Then the taxi pulled to halt in front of one of the larger houses. Looking at it through the window, Yugi immediately recognized it as the house from the picture. The house was still in seemingly perfect shape, but the garden was a mess.

"How much?" Yugi asked from the driver. After paying for the ride, he sat up from the car. The taxi drove away soon after, leaving Yugi alone in front of the house. _'My house,'_ he thought with a slight frown. _'What kind of seventeen year old owns a house? And this isn't even just a house. Its mansion mixed with a shop!'_

Taking few steps forward, Yugi reached his hand out to try the gate. It was supposed to be locked… but apparently two years hadn't only ruined the garden. With a sigh Yugi pushed the gate open and stepped into the garden. Looking around he tried to see what the garden had once looked like - back when his grandfather had been looking after it. He could almost see how beautiful it had been… before the place had started to grow weeds.

"Hey, you there! What do you think you're doing?! That's a private property!" angry voice of a man yelled. Looking over his shoulder, Yugi saw and elderly man walking towards him with angry look about his wrinkled face. "Come out of there, you little -!"

Yugi frowned and looked at the house again. Then he quickly took out the address. "I'm in the right place am I?" he murmured, looking at the address and then looking around to see if he had the right house number. Then he looked at the old man. "Am I at the wrong house?" he asked, showing the address.

The old man looked at him suspiciously before walking closer. Almost angrily, the man took the note from his hand and looked at it closely. "Yeah, it's the address of this house," the man grumbled and looked at him with wary look. "Now what are doing here? Trespassing is a crime, you know. Don't think I won't call the cops just because you're a kid."

Yugi couldn't help but smile at the attitude while he took the note back. "Grumpy old man, aren't you," he muttered and looked at the house. "And I'm not trespassing. If this really is the game shop, then I own this place."

"What?" The old man narrowed his eyes. "What's your name?"

"Mutou Yugi," the teen answered, pushing the note back to his pocket. "It was left to me in my grandfather's will."

"You're Sugoroku's grandson?" the old man's suspicion seemed to fade a bit. "He did say that he had named you as his sole successor… It took you a long time to get here, eh, kid?"

Yugi snorted. "Not my fault," he said. Glancing at the old man, he smiled. "I have a property to check out. I'll talk to you later old man."

"You bet you will. I live next door to you," the old man grumbled, walking away. Chuckling quietly, Yugi closed the gate before heading towards the house's porch.

Despite being a traditional house, it had very modern front door. Yugi frowned at it a bit, brushing away the dirt that had gathered to the window in the door. There was a small sign inside the window. _Game Shop_ was written in the sign in Japanese, English, and some languages Yugi couldn't understand and apparently with hieroglyphs as well.

_'So he really kept a shop. One with a very simple name at that,'_ Yugi mused while rummaging through his pocket in search for the key. After finding it, he quickly began opening the lock - which turned out to be a quite task. Apparently two years of exposure to the elements hadn't done the lock any good. _'These things are made to last, but I guess they last better when someone's around to see they won't rust…'_ Yugi grumbled mentally, turning the key with strength. It took him good ten minutes - and most of the strength of his right arm - before he got the lock open. Then he had to pull the door open. That was bit of a task as well - there was dirt and _moss_ between the door and the frame.

Once the door was finally open, Yugi was greeted by stale air and rush of dust. Coughing softly, he peered into the shop. What ever there was in the shop remained a mystery to him, as everything seemed to be covered by white sheets. _'To protect the things from dust… but who on earth…?'_ Yugi stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. _'I thought that there was no one to look after these. But someone has been here since grandfather died. Someone didn't only look after these things, but knew that no one would be coming for a while. Why else they would've pulled sheets over the stuff here…?'_

Walking to the nearest table, Yugi carefully folded the sheet out of the way, trying not to disturb the dust and send it into the air. Underneath the sheet, there were… cards? Yes, they were cards. Some of them were spreaded to the table as if someone had left game unfinished, and others were stacked in decks. Looking closer, Yugi blinked with surprise. They weren't normal cards. _'Tarot cards?'_ Straightening his back, he pursed his lips with confusion. _'I guess Tarot is a game, but… that's no normal game,'_ he glanced around the 'shop'. _'And this place definitely doesn't look like normal shop. And why are these cards still laid out like this?'_

Carefully putting the sheet back, Yugi left the table and walked to near by shelf. Again moving the sheet out of the way, he looked underneath it curiously. Wooden board games were laid on display on the shelf. But they weren't like anything he had seen before. There were colourful boards with three rows of ten squares as the board, round boards with elaborate snake-like pattern carved and painted in them, something that looked like backgammon, long boards with cup-like holes carved into them… In the lower shelves, Yugi could see somewhat familiar boards of Go, Shogi, Chess… but there were also more he didn't know.

_'Okay, these are games. They're no video games, but they're most definitely games,'_ Yugi thought with slight confusion. _'Maybe grandfather's store was one of those collector stores. By the looks of these, they're pretty old… they might be pretty pricy too. Also, this kind of place isn't exactly plain in sight. You need to know it's here to find it…'_ He shivered a bit while looking at the wooden boards. _'Something… something about these games just doesn't feel right, though…'_

Letting the sheet fall down to hide the games again, Yugi glanced around in the shop. _'Okay… I'll go through these things later. I should check what upstairs looks like. I'm going to be living there after all…'_ Shaking his head to rid himself of the eerie feeling he got of the dust filled shop, he headed towards the sliding door at the back of the room. Seeing the light switch near it, he reached to turn the lights on. Nothing happened. _'The electricity isn't on yet, huh…'_ he frowned a bit._'I need to call the electricity company again. I called them before, but I guess they hadn't gotten around doing something yet…'_

Shrugging his shoulders, he pulled the sliding door open. It revealed the backroom, which made him stop with mild surprise. The back room was filled with shelves and the shelves were full of boxes. Some of them were wooden, others were cardboard - some even had brown paper wrapping. _'Don't tell me that these are full of games too…'_ Yugi frowned and reached to see what was written in one of the cardboard boxes. _'"Hnefatafl x 4, early 9th century, __Norway__"? What the…?'_ With a confused shake of his head, he looked at the box next to the first one. _'"Tablut x 2, late 8th century, __Finland__"? What the heck are these things?'_

Carefully peeling open the "Tablut" box, Yugi found that it was full of Styrofoam balls. Sticking his hand into them, he found something solid and plastic-like inside. Carefully pulling it into the dim light, he saw that it was yet again another game board, packed carefully in bubble plastic. _'This thing is made from solid wood, and it's packed like its precious chinaware?'_ Yugi questioned in his mind. Putting the board back to the box, he looked at the writing at the side of the box. _'Late eighth century… could it be that that board was made in eighth century? My grandfather sold games which belong to museums?'_

Worriedly he bit his lips. _Some of these things might be worth a lot of money. What am I going to do with all of these?'_ He despaired on it for a moment before shaking his head. _'Later, I think about it later. I bet there are tons of things to do around here before I can even start worrying about these games.'_

After one final glance at the shelves, Yugi began searching staircase that might lead upstairs. He found the stairs from the corner of the backroom and quickly headed up. The upstairs was just as dusty as the downstairs, but in upstairs there were no sheets protecting the furniture from the durst.

With a quick inspection, Yugi learned that the kitchen was very modern - dining room was separate and very traditional, though. Beside these two rooms there was a room that seemed to be some sort of sitting room. There were full bookshelves and two comfortable looking zaisu chairs in the room, and it looked like a room where one could relax very easily. The sitting room also had a balcony, which had a nice view to the backyard - sadly at the moment the backyard wasn't all that nice to look at.

Yugi had been worried about the bathing quarters, and was happy to find out that the bathroom had a large ofuro. There was also a separate toilet, it too mercifully modern. Beside the bathing quarters there was laundry room which also alleviated some of Yugi's worries. Rest of the rooms - there was six of them - were large bedrooms. Two of them were empty. In three of them there were more boxes and at that moment Yugi didn't want to wonder what was inside those boxes. The last one of the six bedrooms had been in use of his grandfather.

After his inspection, Yugi was certain that he had seen the entire house. In absence of electricity, he begun opening the windows to let in the light so that he could take a better look - and then he noticed that he had missed one of the rooms. It was just between his grandfather's bedroom and living room and unlike the rest of the rooms… it was locked.

_'Lock in a sliding door?'_ Yugi blinked with confusion and looked around. There were no locks in the other rooms bar the bathroom and the toilet. Turning back to the locket room, he bowed bit to inspect the lock. _'It looks like the front door key might be the one…'_ Taking the house's key out again, Yugi tried to fit it into the lock. It did fit, and unlike the front door, this door opened with an ease. Sliding it open, Yugi coughed slightly at the dusty, stale air that escaped from the room.

The room wasn't storage, like Yugi had thought. Instead it was furbished with an actual bed - not a futon like in his grandfather's room - a table and chair - both with legs - and a shelve. Confused, Yugi stepped forward. The windows were covered in curtains so there was very little light in the room and he couldn't see all of the room, only the rough shapes. Walking across the room, he pulled the curtains aside to let the light in. Then he looked around - and almost jumped with surprise.

There was someone lying on the bed, curled on their side in tight foetal position. For a moment Yugi froze with shock. There was someone in his house - in his grandfather's house - which had been empty for two years! Had someone broken in? Looking around frantically, Yugi stopped to stare at the lock. It wasn't one of those locks you could lock from inside - it only locked from outside. Turning to look at the window, he saw that it was tightly shut - and by the look of the dust, it had been shut for a long while.

He turned to look at the bed again. The person in the bed hadn't moved. The lock only locked from outside. The window hadn't been opened. Yugi's brain fought against the logic as he carefully took step towards the bed. The person in it didn't move, just stayed curled underneath the duvet with their face half hidden in the pillow. Unbidden, a thought flickered through Yugi's mind. _'It doesn't smell decayed here…'_

He shivered and leaned forward. Maybe it was a doll or something? No way could a person stay inside a room for two years and not die - people had to eat to live. So it couldn't be a person… right? Leaning over the… whatever it was lying on the bed, Yugi tried to get a closer look at the head. When he found that he couldn't see even when he reached over the thing, he took hold of the 'shoulder', and pulled the thing around. This time he didn't only jump, but backed away several steps.

_'It's a human! It's a human! How can there be someone here? That door was locked from the outside! And the window hasn't been touched in months!'_ Yugi stared at the person lying on the bed in shock. The person had a spiky dark hair with golden bangs, regal tanned face and by the look of it the person was male. The man didn't stir even after Yugi had so roughly tugged at his shoulder.

Yugi stayed still for few long minutes before frowning. _'Wait, wait… is that…? Yes it is. That guy's covered in dust?' _Carefully he approached the man again. _'Is it really a human? It looks like he hasn't moved in months. No one can sleep that long, they die. Maybe it is a doll. A very humanlike doll… yeah. A doll.'_ He reached his hand forward to touch the doll's face - and promptly pulled his hand away as if he had touched fire. _'Okay, it's not a doll, that was normal skin,'_ he thought with panic.

After moment of frantic thinking, Yugi tried to calm himself down. _'Okay, okay, calm down. There's a man in my grandfather's house, and by he looks of it he has been there for two years without moving once. That door was probably locked by my grandfather too, so he knew that the guy wouldn't move… but how can someone sleep that long and not die?'_

He bit his lip with worry. _'Is… is it a corpse?'_ he worried. After moment of hesitation, he reached for the man, to check the man's neck. _'Pulse, pulse, let there be pulse,'_ he thought hopefully as he pressed his fingertips against the man's neck. _'I don't know what I will do or what it will mean if this guy has a pulse, but… I'd rather have someone who has been sleeping for two years rather than someone who has been lying dead for two years in my house. Let there be a pulse…'_

He felt nothing but warm firm flesh. _'Maybe it's the wrong spot..?'_ touching his own neck, he searched for his own pulse. After finding the spot, he found the same spot in the man's neck. Nothing. After some moments of pressing against the caramel-shaded skin, he was just about to pull his fingers away when he felt it. Single beat. Surprised but hopeful, he kept his fingers in the same spot and waited. It took over half a minute, but he felt another one.

_'What the…? This guy's heart beats twice in a minute? That can't be…'_ He timed it with his phone's timer, and confirmed that the man's heart did beat only twice per minute - or actually it was more like thrice in two minutes. Sitting dully beside the bed, Yugi stared at the sleeping man. _'What the hell is going on here?'_ he questioned helplessly. _'This isn't physically possible. This guy should be dead!'_

He spent a moment of dully staring at the man. Then he looked around with confusion and helplessness. _'What am I supposed to do with this guy…? What's that?' _There was a piece of paper on the bedside table. Taking it into his hand, he brushed the dust from it and read it. It was addressed to him. _"Yugi, go to the cellar."_

_'This place has a cellar…? Wait, did grandfather leave this to me? How did he know I would be the one… wait. He left everything to me,'_ frowning, the teen sat up. That had been one of the things which had confused him. In his grandfather's will there had been no mention of his mother - everything had been left to Yugi even though Sugoroku's own daughter had been still alive. _'He knew that I would come here one day…'_

_'I'm getting a headache because of all this,'_ the teenager sighed heavily and let the slip of paper fall to the floor. _'But okay. Let's go the cellar. Maybe there are some answers there.'_

_xx_

Okay, this AU, or atleast some of the ideas I will be using in this AU have been runing around my head for a while. Ancient games and such. Finally got around writing the idea down to reasonably decent form. My apologies for possible grammar errors and all comments are appreciated


	2. II Game of Denial

**II chapter  
Game of denial**

Knowing that there was a cellar and finding it were two different things. At first Yugi through that he could get to the cellar by a staircase - but the only staircase there was, was between first and second floor. Next he thought that if there was way into the cellar, it had to be in the first floor - so there should've been a trapdoor somewhere… except he couldn't find it. He found more and more games - puzzling over one made of solid block of stone for a moment - but no trapdoor.

After that he tried to find the way into the cellar from the backyard - except there was none. Only thing there was in the backyard was the unkempt garden along with a large and very dirty koi pond. If there had been koi-fish in it, there were none anymore. While looking for the hidden way to the cellar from the backyard, he made a promise to make the garden proper again - even to clean the pond. It was pity to see them in such shape.

Finally he returned to the second floor to read the note again to see if he had missed something. But there was nothing else written into the note, just; _"Yugi, go to the cellar." _Nothing more. Even as Yugi groaned loudly with frustration, the sleeping man didn't move.

_'Maybe there's a hint of the cellar in grandfather's bedroom?'_ Yugi mused after a while and then ended up snooping through the room. He found nothing at first - there were clothing in the closets along with some extra beddings and things like that, but nothing more. There were surprisingly few personal items. After a while it started to bother Yugi. _'Didn't my grandfather even have family pictures?'_

In the end he ended up snooping through the covers of his grandfather's bed. That was when he found the trapdoor. _'Okay, this is getting weirder and weirder. He slept on the trapdoor? And why is it in the second floor and not in the first one?'_ Shaking his head to push the confusion aside, Yugi pried the wooden trapdoor open to see ladder leading down to what looked eerily like a well. After staring down to the darkness for a moment, he sat up again. _'Maybe there's a flashlight somewhere. No way am I going down there without some light…'_

He found a flashlight from the kitchen. Armed with it, he headed back to his grandfather's bedroom and then down to the ladder. While descending in the dark, cramped space, he tried to model a blueprint of the first floor in his mind. How could his grandfather hide the ladder's shaft in the first floor? _'I'll think about it later…'_ he decided as he finally came to the end of the ladder. Stepping down from the ladder, he was slightly surprised to find that the floor was wooden.

_'Okay let's check this place out…'_ he thought, pointing flashlight to the dark room. The place reminded him eerily of the shop's storage room in the first floor. There were shelves in this place too, but there was a striking difference. One, these shelves were filled with hand made books, scripts and scrolls - and not just Japanese scrolls, some of the scrolls looked like they had been made of parchment. Two, the shelves themselves were all made of glass, all tightly shut to prevent air getting into the writings.

Stepping closer to the shelves, Yugi frowned. Every shelve was marked with numbers, like 2870-2899 and 2900-2919 and so forth. Walking along the shelves, he came to the conclusion that the numbers went backwards, all the way down to 1. The shelf of 1-39 was filled with strange scrolls - neither paper nor parchment. And the final shelve, 2979-xxxx wasn't filled completely like the others.

Peering curiously into the final shelve, Yugi frowned. The shelf of 2979-xxxx was filled with books with black covers. Each other books had a number in the back. The final number was 2998 and for some reason that number had a scary ring to it.

_'What are these things?'_ he questioned after moment of exploring. _'There are hundreds of these things here. They got to have some purpose…'_ after hesitating for a moment, he slid open the glass panel of the final shelve, and took the 2998 book into his hand. Flipping it open, he stared down to the first entry. It was written in the same handwriting as the note upstairs, as the letters sent to him and his mother. His grandfather's handwriting.

_"First of July, two-thousand and two. This year marks the twenty-nine-hundredth and ninety-eight. It has been ten years since Yugi completed the Puzzle, and there is no change in His state. He still sleeps; waiting for my grandson's to return…"_

Yugi stopped reading and stared down to the third sentence. "It has been ten years since Yugi did _what_?" he asked out loud in shock. His eyes skipped to the date. "Two thousand and two. Two years ago? Two years ago it was ten years ago - twelve years ago I did what? What puzzle?" He frowned. Puzzle. Another taboo word in the house of his mother. Looking down to the book, Yugi contemplated if he should continue reading. Looking at the shelves, he sighed. If the book 2998 was for year 2002, then… book 2988 was for 1992? _'And if this year would have a book, it would be 3000…'_ Yugi shivered a bit. After a moment he closed the book. _'Go to the cellar, the note said. Grandfather couldn't have meant for me to read all of these, right? There has to be something else here. Something which will, hopefully, explain this all…'_

Putting the book back and closing the panel, Yugi continued exploring the cellar. After a moment he found a table at the end of the cellar. There was another book waiting there, closed in airtight plastic bag to protect it against the humidity. Beside the book there was a golden, Egyptian styled box, it too inside a plastic bag

Taking the book into his hand, Yugi read the cover. _"Magister's Guide. From Sugoroku to Yugi. 2988 - 2998 (1992 - 2002)"_ was written with golden ink to the cover. He blinked at the title. _'This has to be it, but… Magister? What the heck?'_

After moment of thinking, Yugi took the book and the box, and headed up towards the ladder. Climbing the ladder with the book and the box wasn't all that easy, but he was able to do it. Once he was in the second floor, he pulled his grandfather's futon back over the trapdoor before heading out of the room. Throwing a glance to the room where the strange comatose man lay, Yugi headed to the sitting room. There he sat down to one of the zaisu before taking the book out of the bag. Then, after spending a moment trying to calm down his nerves, he opened the book.

_ "Dear Yugi _

_ "I know without doubt that by the time you come upon this book, both me and your mother are dead. I cannot know how long it takes. It might be decades before you ever see this book, but I know that you will and that time will change really nothing. Whether you are still child or an old man, you are still ignorant of the things that should've been part of your life since you were a child. And the blame lies with your mother, my daughter. _

_ "But what is done is done and the past cannot be changed. Future is what we must concentrate. But before we can, the past much be understood. So. Before I can explain anything, I must explain the history of our family. Try to keep an open mind. All that I write here is true.…" _

x

Next morning found Yugi from the sitting room, bleary eyed after spending the entire night reading the book. He felt strangely dull after reading it. The sunlight was slowly bleeding into the room, and he could hear how birds chirped outside, but it felt strangely dull.

_'Might be because I haven't slept or eaten at all since yesterday,'_ he mused, staring at the closed book sitting innocently in the table between the two zaisu chairs. Then he slowly turned his eyes to the window, blinking them against the light. His eyes felt dry. With a sigh he rubbed his hand over them. _'I'm starving… I need to find a grocery shop and get myself something to eat. And today I need to start cleaning this place up…'_

As he sat up, leaving the book and the Egyptian box behind, he knew somewhere in the back of his head that he was in state of denial. It didn't bother him all that much, not yet anyway. After years of dealing with his mother, he had gotten adjusted to accepting that not all things in people were logical. His denial wasn't logical, but then again, neither was what he had read. What he knew and understood was that right now he needed something normal to occupy his mind and hands with or he would collapse under the confusion.

Clumsily he headed to the bathroom. As he unwittingly reached to click the lights on, he was happy to find that the electricity was finally on - and that the bathroom lights worked. The water was on too, he found just before he washed away the sleepless night from his face. Once he was done, he brushed his wet hands over his hair to make it settle down somewhat, and stared at his reflection.

His eyes were bloodshot, which somehow made the strange colour of his irises seem even stronger than usually. There were also shadows under his eyes which enhanced the colour. Trying not to think about the possible reasons why he had been born with violet eyes, he examined his outlook. Thick leather collar around his neck, black shirt with sleeves torn off, leather pants with thick belt. Brushing dark his hair aside, he tugged at his earlobe - and the silver earrings there. He smiled. It wasn't really any surprise that his neighbour had acted like he had.

_'I wonder what grandfather would say if he knew his successor looked like this…Though my hair looks weirder when I don't dye it. Who has two colour hair naturally?'_

His mother hadn't approved his style, that was for sure. She had been pulling her hair when Yugi had started to prefer black; she had been in prink of desperation when he had adopted leather pants and when he had gotten his first piercing she had nearly had a heart attack. What she had said still echoed in Yugi's ears sometimes. _"Why can't you be like other kids?"_

"Why would I be like them?" he muttered to himself and lowered his hands.

_"If you just were a normal boy like the other boys, you might get friends!"_

He snorted and turned away from the mirror. _'Sorry, mom. After years of being bullied by those "other boys" I just don't feel like bending over to them and becoming whatever they wanted me to be.'_ He had loved his mother dearly, but they had stopped understanding each other when he had started high school.

_'Okay, that doesn't matter. And I won't depress myself by starting to think about it now,'_ he shook his head and left the bathroom. _'I need to get something to eat. Oh, and I need to check if this place has stuff I can use to clean. Vacuum cleaner would be nice but I can deal with a mop too…'_

After checking what cleaning supplies the place had - there was a vacuum cleaner and a mop, thankfully - Yugi turned the fridge on and made a list of things he needed. After that he emptied his backpack to the sitting room, took his wallet, phone and keys. After checking the comatose guy - who was in the room which had actually been HIS room twelve years ago - he headed out. He had no idea where the nearest grocery store was, but he hoped that he could ask someone on the way.

He wasn't sure if he was surprised or not when he saw a small gathering of people just outside his gate when he stepped out. Apparently the word of him moving in had travelled across the neighbourhood and the people living near him had gathered to take a look. They were elderly people mostly and by the look of it they were all very wealthy. The women had expensive jewellery and one of the elder men had a cane decorated with gold.

They all turned silent when they saw him and Yugi could read shock in their features. _'I guess I'm not what they expected Sugoroku's grandson to be like, huh? Well, I'm not what most people expect,'_ he mused while walking to the gate. It was a bit amusing how his neighbours quickly backed away when he approached - few of the women even looked a bit frightened.

"Uh… so you're Sugoroku's grandson?" one of the men asked awkwardly. "I'm Kudo Daisuke from number sixteen. Welcome to the neighbourhood."

"I'm Mutou Yugi and thanks," Yugi smiled - apparently surprising his neighbours again. "I'm sorry to bother you, but could any of you point me to the nearest grocery store?" His polite words seemed to calm most of his neighbours quite a bit. _'I guess they were worried that I would be a rude on top of looking like I do,'_ he thought amusedly.

"Oh, it's a bit far away for you to go by foot," elderly woman with heavy earrings and heavy make up said worriedly. She glanced at the man beside him. "You're about to visit the grocery store, right, Hayato? Maybe you should give him a lift…"

Yugi was forced to spend a moment chatting with his neighbours. They were apparently very curious about him, so he told them the basics of his story. The women sympathised with him about his mother death for a long while and promised to help him with the garden if he would need the help. The men nodded with pity as well and were quick to offer help if something needed to be repaired around the house. After Yugi had promised to ask help if he needed it, he was lead away by Tanaka Hayato and to the man's fancy sports car.

"Sugoroku left everything to you, hm?" the elderly man asked as they sat down to the car. "The shop as well?"

"Yeah," Yugi nodded, feeling a bit awkward about sitting in such a fancy car but happy to get a ride in any case. "I'm not sure what I will do about it yet, though. I'll try to clean the house first and settle in before I start thinking about the shop."

"Hmm…" Tanaka nodded. "It's good to have priorities. That house is going to be your home so it's better to get it up to shape first. I do hope that Sugoroku left you some notes on how to deal with the shop, though. It might be a bit overwhelming otherwise."

"Oh, yeah, he left notes," Yugi assured. _'Three thousand years worth of them too',_ he added silently. "My mother was also in somewhat similar trade, so I'm not completely ignorant," he said thoughtfully. _'Mom was just a cashier in a store, but that's still better than nothing.'_

"That's good," the elderly man nodded. Rest of the drive he chatted about his sons business in Domino downtown - something about construction. Yugi ended up listening only with half ear.

When they came to the grocery store, he was somewhat disappointed with his neighbours. _'They think I can't walk two kilometres?'_ he mused as he sat up from the car. Then he snorted. _'Or maybe they just wanted me to go with someone of their gossip ring, hoping that they would get more out of me this way.'_

As he shopped, Tanaka seemed to keep a close eye on what he bought. Yugi ignored the elderly man as he picked some food stuff for himself before finding some cleaning supplies. Since his mother had been almost constantly working, he had gotten adjusted to shopping long while ago. For the same reason, he had also learned to cook at early age.

"That's it?" Tanaka seemed slightly surprised when Yugi headed towards the counters. The old man quickly schooled his surprised expression, but Yugi had seen it before and knew it what it meant.

"I don't drink and I don't smoke," he said simply. "And I'm only seventeen." Despite what he looked like, he wasn't a delinquent. Besides, didn't youths need "bad influence" of "bad crowd" to fall into "bad habits"? That was at least what people had said to his mother, wondering what kind of friends Yugi must've had when he had turned out the way he had.

After paying for his things, Yugi put them into his backpack. Tanaka was slightly awkward on their drive way to the old neighbourhood, but Yugi paid no mind to it. The man was probably making new conclusions of him, but Yugi hadn't cared what people thought of him for a while now. He had gotten adjusted to the fact that he could never meet the expectations people insistently made.

Instead of stopping to chat with the gossip circle of his neighbourhood again, Yugi headed straight to his house. The sleepless night was starting to weight heavily on his eyelids and he wanted to at least vacuum the house before collapsing. If Takana rejoined the gossipers, he didn't notice but he wasn't too interested either.

He managed not only to vacuum the upstairs, but air the futons as well - and there was enough of them for about eighteen people. The room he ended up making his own was the room in which his grandfather had slept - mostly because the trapdoor was there. He didn't bother to personalise the place that day, though. By the time he had gotten the futons back to the closets, he was too tired to even walk straight.

x

On the net day, Yugi's possessions from Domino were finally bought by the moving company's truck. Thankfully the driver was helpful enough to not only drive the truck near the door, but also help Yugi carry the stuff inside, so it didn't take too long. After he had paid the man, Yugi spend that and following day sorting through the stuff. He ended up packing most of his mother's stuffs into one of the empty bedrooms - though he did scatter some random things such as pictures and his mother's flower vases around the house to make it seem more like home. Most of the stuff ended in his new bedroom though - along with his desk and old bed, which took four hours to pull together again.

While sorting through the possessions from Tokyo, he also sorted through his grandfather's possessions. He ended up keeping the sitting room as it was - it was rather pleasant room and the books in the bookshelves seemed like something he could read. He didn't change the kitchen or the dining room either. He did pack his grandfathers old clothing and such into boxes and took the said boxes into one of the bedrooms-changed-into-storage-rooms.

All the while he did this, the comatose man remained unmoving. Yugi cleaned that room as well, vacuuming and cleaning it before he turned his sight to the man himself. It took a bit of work, but he transferred the man from the bed to a futon for long enough for him to clean the bed and change the bedding. Then he left the comatose man alone again, knowing that he couldn't do anything else for the man right now. Generally he tried not to think about the man at all

Once he was finally somewhat satisfied with the upstairs - though he knew he would no doubt make changes later on - he turned his sights to the yard. He didn't have much experience about keeping gardens, but he got lot of hints from the women of the neighbourhood - few even started to help him. Learning even while working, Yugi started to shape the front and backyard back to their former glory. Letting the women help him turned out to be a good idea by the time they reached the koi pond - they all had koi ponds in their backyards, so they knew how to take care of one.

"This we need to clean man manually at first. Then I suggest you should buy a new skimmer and pump," Tanaka Hanako, Tanaka Hayato's wife, said while looking at the dirty pond with distaste. She and the other women had shed their jewellery and expensive clothing. as they had immersed themselves in helping Yugi's gardening. "Maybe a filter and UV sterilizer too."

"Huh?" Yugi asked with confusion.

"Did you think these things take care of themselves?" Kudo Keiko, Kudo Daisuke's wife, asked amusedly. "You need a skimmer filter to make sure that pond won't get dirty - it will be cleaning the debris and leaves and such away. The pump will the be the beating heart of the pond - how do you think it will turn if the water is stagnant? Also, if you're going to have koi-fish in the pond, you're going to need a filter."

"An UV sterilizer will make sure no pesky parasites or floating algae can settle in the pond," Hanako nodded, peering a the pond. "It looks like Sugoroku had a decent pump and skimmer filter, but two years being left out here with no maintenance at all… well, you're better of buying new ones."

It took a quite bit of time to clean the pond. They ended first raking the most of the dirt and debris away before Keiko had her husband bring their water pump. With that they emptied the entire pond, which made it much easier to weed the bottom, which had grown full of all sorts of weeds. As they cleaned the pond Yugi got extended lesson of proper koi pond care which would probably last for a life time.

The needed equipments weren't exactly cheap to buy, but they didn't even make a dent to Yugi's account. As the men of the neighbourhood helped them to set everything in place, Yugi wondered if he would ever get adjusted to the idea of being rich. Probably not.

Yugi wasn't one for flowers but the women insisted that now that he had a working pond, it should have plants. "Plant also work as filtering devices," they educated him. "They will help keep the water clear, along with the mechanical filter and the skimmer…" Eventually Yugi bent and flowers were bought and planted. With water lilies, some watercress and water mind, the pond didn't look half bad.

After that, Yugi was taken to buy the koi fish. Since he had good sized pond with powerful pump and good filter, the women assured him that he should get at least fifteen fish - but no more than thirty. When they were looking at the koi fish in the pet store, Yugi wondered why only thirty - the fish were tiny.

"Oh, trust us, they will grow bigger than that," the women chuckled at him. "They're small here because their tanks are small. They will start growing once they will get a bigger place to grow in."

Yugi ended up buying golden and platinum coloured Ogon koi-fishes, that had no patterns like most koi seem to have. Keiko had Tancho koi in her bond - the sort of koi-fish that had red patch on their heads - whilst Hanako had Shusui koi - white and orange koi with line of navy scales in their back. While Yugi released his still tiny koi to his fully functional pond, the women were pondering the differences between the koi varieties. Yugi himself hadn't even known that there were koi varieties.

With the garden ready, Yugi tuned his attention to little things that needed to be fixed around the house. With the help of his male neighbours, he fixed the lock of his gate and got a new lock to his front door since the old one was rather stiff. Soon he found himself out of things to do and was forced to turn his sight to the two things he had avoided so far. The shop was the first thing and the underground library and what it entailed was another. Sadly these things were sort of package deal and Yugi knew that if he was to start sorting through the shop, he needed to sort through the cellar - and the history of his family. History which he had avoided thinking about.

_'I think I've been playing denial for long enough,'_ he sighed as he picked up the Magister's Guide and the golden box that was still in the plastic bag. With a shake of his head he headed to the room of the comatose man and sat down to the floor to reread the book - this time willing himself to accept it. After all, he had living proof lying right there - right where it had been lying for twelve years, waiting for him.

xx

Okay, this was surprisingy popular. Maybe that means I'm getting better at story telling (I wish). Now I shall rant a bit

Okays, since this is AU fic, I dictate the characters and the plot however I please.(Byebye Duel Monsters, I shall not miss you). People will be OOC, Yugi above all others. He grew up differently here and ended up different. So did some others. This shall not be Yaoi, nor there shall be any other pairings either. Sorry, yaoi lovers. I like yaoi as much as any other rabid fangirl, but sadly... I love drama more.

I'm not gonna even start on my grammar. Lets just say that English not my first language and I almost flunked it back when I was supposed to be learning it, and leave it at that.

Thank you all for your reviews, it's nice to be appreciated.

(I drew Yugi of this fic, incase someone is interested. Link should be on my profile.)


	3. III Game Keeper

**III chapter**

**Game Keeper**

_ "Dear Yugi_

_ "I know without doubt that by the time you come upon this book, both me and your mother are dead. I cannot know how long it takes. It might be decades before you ever see this book, but I know that you will and that time will change really nothing. Whether you are still child or an old man, you are still ignorant of the things that should've been part of your life since you were a child. And the blame lies with your mother, my daughter._

_ "But what is done is done and the past cannot be changed. Future is what we must concentrate. But before we can, the past much be understood. So. Before I can explain anything, I must explain the history of our family. Try to keep an open mind. All that I write here is true._

_ "Our family is far older than you probably have ever thought it was. And when I say "our family", I don't mean just you, me and your mother. We are just last of our family. Before us there were hundreds of others like us. You are the last. I was the one before you. My father, Shiai, was the one before me and his father, Chouhan, was the one before him. All the way down to our forefather, Simon, who lived three thousand years ago._

_ "Simon lived in the Ancient __Egypt__ as we call it now. To him it was known as Khemet and it was far different world from what we know today. He lived in a world of magic now mostly forgotten, as a magician himself. He was also the pharaoh's advisor - both to the old pharaoh, Akunumkanon, and his son._

_ "Those were difficult, strange times. Dangerous even. The magic that no one now remembers roamed across the lands in the hands of sorcerers and magicians. Some of them were good and some of them were bad. Those of the worse sort often used their powers against people unable to defend themselves and generally didn't do much good. The pharaoh of Khemet, who was supposed to defend the people, had magicians such as Simon at his side, and together with them he did defend his people - both Akunumkanon and his son…."_

Yugi leaned the back of his head against the wall behind him as he skimmed over the part where his grandfather detailed the battles. Rubbing his forehead, he found that trying to accept that his family might have roots in Egypt wasn't that difficult concept to accept. It was the magic bit that was giving him a headache. Magic was another taboo by his mother's will, another thing he had never thought of.

"I don't know what gives me more trouble. The fact that she kept this all from me, or the fact that it actually might be true," he sighed and looked at comatose man lying in the bed. The man hadn't even twitched in the entire time he had been in the house - and he had been there for about two weeks now. Daily Yugi checked the man's pulse and it hadn't changed at all - it was still three beats per two minutes. It wasn't physically possible, but magically…

With a shake of his head he turned back to the book and turned a page.

_ "… I don't know much about the final moments of the young pharaoh's reign. Something very horrible happened and the pharaoh fell along with is court. Simon as well. But I know this. Before the pharaoh fell, he gave a task to Simon - and with his last strength, Simon passed that task onto his son to be passed down his linage. That task was the golden box - to keep the box safe and hidden for as long as it took. With that task Simon's son left Khemet behind."_

Yugi glanced at the box in the airtight plastic bag. Duty to keep a box? It seemed bit ridiculous when one put it like that. But it wasn't the box that mattered. It was what was inside it. Yugi hadn't looked inside it, but he knew what it was. It was described in the book.

_"For hundreds of years - thousands of years - Simon's descendants have kept the duty. Simon's son started the habit of keeping track of the box and everything that has happened around it. That task he passed down to his son who passed it onto his son and so forth and so forth for many, many years. In the library underneath the house there are records of hundreds of our family members - mine included._

_"There is more to our family legacy than just keeping the box safe. Our line is that of magicians, and that was also what was passed down from father to son. Thousands of years of magic are recorded in those records along with everything that has happened around the box, around our family. Thousands of years of knowledge that is possibly known only to our family._

_"And our family had been in many places. Simon was the last of our family to be buried under the sands of __Egypt__. Simon's son was buried in what now is __Israel__. Simon's grandson travelled to Jordan, his children went to Iraq, then to Syria, __Turkey__… across what is now __Europe__, up to __Scandinavia__, across what is now __Russia__ to __Mongolia__ back towards west and __Kazakhstan__… From __India__ to __China__ until finally my grandfather came to __Japan__ and changed his name to Mutou Chouhan._

_"Hundreds of years of migration until we came here. My father, Shiai, moved here, to Domino, back when this place was just a nameless village. He built this house, hid the library underneath it, and begun living here. I learned at his feet. He sold games of the world outside __Japan__'s shores and I, eventually, took his occupation as my own. Of course… we sold more than just games. And our customers and suppliers are a bit more than just customers and suppliers. Especially these days._

_"Since the magic of our family and the duty of keeping the box had been strictly patriarchal for hundreds of years, your mother, Naita, did not learn at my feet. She wanted to and I wanted to teach her, but it was impossible. For too long has the magic of our family been in the hands of the men of our family. She, as a woman, did not have that magic. She thought it unfair even as a young child and truthfully speaking it was unfair. But nothing could be done about it. The only way the legacy to continue was in the hands of son, her son. You. And I guess that thought tasted bitter in her mouth."_

Yugi stopped reading for a while, pulling his legs against his chest and hugging them. _'Sometimes… I know mom loved me and cared for me, but sometimes she would look at me strangely. Like there was something in me - something she didn't like at all…'_ he mused silently, sadly. _'Was she… bitter and jealous of me because I was born male? Because I had that potential she didn't have…?'_

After moment of stillness and self-comfort, Yugi took the book to his hands and continued to read.

_"Eventually Naita married a young man she met at her college. Eventually she had son, you. According to the tradition set down by my grandfather, you were named Yugi and I looked forward to teaching you everything my father had taught me._

_ "I'm not sure if you remember, but until you were five, you lived in this house. Before leaving us your father worked hard and your mother spend time at home, and you… well, you ran around at everyone's feet. Not that we minded. You were mostly with me down in the shop and as soon as you could understand anything, I begun telling you all about games. The first game you played was Mehen. I wonder if you remember."_

Yugi stopped again to try and remember. He had never really tried to remember time before living in Tokyo. He had known that he and his mother had lived in Domino before that - it had been a bit obvious with Domino being such a taboo in the house. But he had been so young back then. It hadn't seemed to matter… and now it was too long for him to remember. He didn't even know what "Mehen" was.

_"I showed you the box and pieces inside it and told you stories of our family. You loved the box, always wanted to see it, to see the pieces. When you were three, your parents had a divorce and your father left. To distract you from his absence I allowed you to play with the pieces. Seeing that you would one day be the guardian of those precious pieces of gold, I saw no harm in it."_

Yugi paused to think about his father. He had never seen the man in person, but he knew a bit about him. Sasaki Utomu had been one of the rare past related things which hadn't been taboos. His mother had been the one to tell him that Utomu had left Japan when Yugi had been about seven - currently the man lived somewhere in United States of America, running a business of sorts.

His mother had never told him why she and Utomu had divorced, though. Now Yugi couldn't help but wonder if it had something to do with the family legacy thing. It seemed like something that could frighten a person enough to make them leave the country.

_ "For two years you played around with the pieces. For two years you tried to make them fit together. In two years… you made them fit."_

Almost against his will, Yugi turned to look at the golden box with Egyptian hieroglyphs carved to the sides. After a moment of hesitation he took the box to his hand and opened the plastic bag. Carefully sliding the box out, he just looked at it for a moment. Then he opened it.

Inside the box there was a golden pyramid, gleaming in the light. Not daring to touch it just yet, Yugi turned the box in his hands to see the pyramid from all angles. It had an Eye of Hours in one side, and there was leather thread attached to a hoop in it. If the thing would hang from the thread, the pyramid would be upside down. It was clearly meant to be like that since the Eye of Hours would be right way around. Looking at it more closely, Yugi could see the lines between the pieces - they fit so well against each other that they were nearly impossible to see, but they were these. The pyramid was really made of pieces.

_'And I put it together when I was five?'_ Yugi questioned softly.

_"When you did, I thought lightning had struck the house. It shook and everything was filled with bright light. When it stopped you were lying on the floor… and He was lying right beside you. I'm sure you've seen Him by now. He should still be up there, in your old bedroom, in your old bed."_

Yugi glanced at the man lying there. Unlike in the beginning, the man was lying on his back now - the way Yugi had placed him after changing the bed sheets. Yugi had also cleaned the man of the dust and brushed his hair. Other than that, nothing was different. The man still slept on - if he even was sleeping - his face expressionless and doll like. Like a Sleeping Beauty - but nothing like it.

_"You were unconscious for hours. He woke first, confused, frightened and strangely desperate. He couldn't speak and couldn't understand anything your mother and I said. But He understood something we didn't - His first action was to stumble to His feet, across the house and to you. Once He had your hand in His, He seemed relax._ _When you woke, you seemed to accept His presence immediately and He wouldn't leave your side._

_"As I tried to figure out what had happened, your mother was confused and frightened about the situation. She feared Him, I suppose. Naita tried to separate you two, but you didn't seem to understand why - and He started crying if you were out of His sight. I tried to calm Naita down, tell her that panicking wouldn't help any of us and we should just be patient until I could figure out what had happened. I thought she listened to me. I thought wrong. I guess He was the straw that broke camel's back._

_"About six days after He appeared, you and your mother disappeared. I suppose she figured that you would be safe away from Him if she took you away, silly girl. I woke up to His cries when He tried to find you and couldn't. I couldn't calm Him down no matter what I did, He just kept crying. I tried to find you and your mother to calm Him down, but I guess by that time she had already taken you out of Domino._

_"About week after, He started to weaken. As I realised what was happening, I intensified my search. Used out family contacts until I found Naita's trail. By that time she had already rented an apartment from __Tokyo__ and I guessed she had planned to raise you there. She wouldn't answer my calls after the first one I made, and I guess she didn't read any of the letters I sent either. She was resolved to end our family relationship - and apparently ruin our family legacy by keeping you away from it._

_"Month after your mother had taken you away, He lay down to your bed and fell asleep. He didn't wake up - not for months and not for years. And I understood why. When you solved that ancient puzzle, you bind Him to you. He was dependant of your life force and when you weren't there He couldn't function. So He shut down like machine with no power, to wait for you._

_ "In the last ten years He hasn't aged a day as He has slept - nothing in Him has change. I'm not sure if your presence will wake Him or not, but I hope that when He does awaken, you will be more understanding than your mother was. I hope that you will look into our family legacy and try understanding. I hope that you… will continue uphold the duty of our family. And look after Him as I have."_

Yugi closed the book and looked at the comatose man again. He had been there for two weeks, but the man hadn't woken up. Nothing ha changed. _'But then again, he has been sleeping for twelve years. After that kind of sleep I guess it will take him a while to wake up…'_

He snorted softly. _'Though this explains one thing. No wonder I'm this short when this guy has been leeching off my life force ever since I was five.'_

x

Yugi began sorting through the shop after rereading through his grandfather's book - and by using it as his guide. He didn't know most of the games his grandfather had sold - over half of them were so old that they were forgotten by everyone else but some few specialists. Also, all of the games were a bit more than games. Thankfully, Sugoroku had left plenty of notes and explanations behind.

Yugi's great great grandfather had started it when he had picked the name Chouhan. The habit of games that is. Apparently magic stuck to games very easily - possibly because of the concentration people gave to games when they played them. Chouhan, Shiai and Sugoroku had all studied the nature of such games until they had gotten understanding of them - and begun to collect them. While collecting them, they had countered people of kin spirit, which had eventually led Shiai into starting the Game Shop which Sugoroku had continued.

It was a very private business with very… special customers. Most of those clients were abroad, as were the shop's dealers. Officially it was a business of buying from private collectors and selling to private collectors. However, the shop's suppliers had been a mixed crowd of magicians, collectors, archaeologists, adventurers, treasure hunters and even thieves… and such was the clientele as well. And the merchandise was indeed not cheap - but then again, these weren't games you bought to your child as a birthday present.

While sorting through the shop, Yugi also studied the games. The Magister's Guide was great help to him - in it his grandfather had explained almost every game. Also, the more special games had notes attached to them, detailing their less than ordinary nature in detail. That didn't save Yugi from few shocks as he examined the games, but it was better than nothing.

Some of the games were cursed. Others were blessed. Some had actual magical effect. Few even had worlds inside of them. Then there were haunted games. Charmed games were Yugi's favourite ones since they were spelled to only do something and that's it. He nearly had a heart attack when he encountered his first charmed game. Once he had calmed down - and understood why the pieces were moving by themselves - it was actually rather interesting. It was a neat to have a chessboard that could play against you - and getting your ass kicked at chess by chessboard was definitely a novel experience.

Whilst going though the games and trying to understand them, Yugi also studied the archive under the house. Sadly, the only records he could read were the ones made by his grandfather, great grandfather and great great grandfather. The other records were written in languages he couldn't understand - his great great great grandfather for example had written his recordings in Chinese. But it wasn't as big of a loss, because first thing his three Japanese grandfathers had done was to write down how they comprehended their family duty, what they had learned from their fathers, and all they knew about family magic. It apparently had been some sort of rite of passage in his family - the first record new keeper had done was record of what he knew.

It was pretty cool, now that he was over the denial, to realise that he had family spells. _Family spells!_ It wasn't every family that actually had spells, but his had. Most of them were protective in nature - spells to protect the house, the records and of course the box. There were other spells too - ones used to capture and contain things, others to repel things, to examine, to understand… there were even exorcism spells. Most of the latter ones had been invented by Chouhan, Shiai and Sugoroku as they had dealt with magical games.

Knowing the spells and using them were two different things, though. Yugi had been supposed to grow around magic like every other male of his family, but his mother had been in way of that. Because of that he had no experience of magic, and so trying to use it was quite difficult. Chouhan, Shiai and Sugoroku had all, as they had been growing, done magic almost accidentally. It was like speaking; kids learned to speak by listening other people speak; magicians learned magic by being around other magicians, in this case, their fathers. But Yugi didn't have that experience.

Thankfully, Sugoroku had prepared for this. He had written down instructions of "finding magic" for Yugi. Apparently magic was the famous, mysterious sixth sense. _"Being around the Game Shop, you should be able to sense some of the strongest games. Try it. Just walk around and try to sense something… different. You should be able to sense it with ease; it's in your blood."_

Since the beginning Yugi had felt there was something very different about some of the games and he had sensed that even before he had known that there were magical elements involved. However, he took the advice to his heart and tried sensing the games. It was surprisingly easy to sharpen the sense - the more he tried, the better he sensed until he did it unconsciously. Every time he walked cross the storage room, he was aware of each and every game that had even a hint of magic in it

_"Next you should try sensing different forms of magic - because there are many different forms. Cursed game is quite different from blessed one, charmed is different from possessed one and so forth."_

Again Yugi tried. When he knew what he was supposed to do, it became easier to notice how different the magic could feel. Cursed games felt heavier and darker whilst blessed ones seemed to glow. Charmed games felt safe and secure somehow whilst possessed games seemed somehow uncomfortable and awkward.

_"Feeling the magic is of course different from using the magic, but once you can feel it you should be able to do it. If you know what the word sounds like, you should be able to say it, right? Magic is the same. You should start with protective spells, since our family specialises in those. Take a water glass for example, enclose it in bubble of protective magic and then try breaking it. If the class breaks, you failed. If it doesn't, you've made a successful shield - or you're bad at breaking things. Practice makes perfect."_

In the following days, Yugi bought and broke lot of glasses.

x

Sugoroku's records had a lot more detailed explanation of the ten years after Yugi had moved away with his mother. The month following the departure was especially detailed as it described everything and anything about the nameless man who had appeared from the puzzle. Sugoroku hadn't left anything out - not even how he had struggled to teach the stranger to use bathroom properly.

Yugi read through that part of the records through enough many times to build an understanding of the man. Sugoroku had had few theories about who the man was, but he hadn't apparently dared to trust in any of them. When magic was involved, your usual logic didn't always work. What Sugoroku had known for sure was that the man didn't remember or know anything at all - he had barely known how to walk.

_'It could be that the duty of guarding the box and the puzzle pieces was duty to guard this man,'_ Yugi thought, trying to get a feel to his grandfather's theories as he sat by the comatose man, reading the record which he had brought to the light of day from the underground archive. _'The younger pharaoh of the two Simon served have the duty to Simon for a reason. This guy could be the reason…'_

Looking at the unmoving man for a moment, Yugi drummed the book's page with his fingers. _'Or it could he that I somehow accidentally created him when I completed the puzzle. If the puzzle has that kind of power, power to create humans, then it's no wonder it had to be kept away and protected like our family has done…'_

Examining the now familiar regal features of the man, Yugi smiled a little. Then he turned to the record number 2988 and closed the book. _'I guess it doesn't matter all that much. He's part of the puzzle, part of the box somehow, and as a Mutou it's my duty to guard them - him included. Bit boring guarding over a sleeping guy, though… oh well, I have my magic studies to entertain me.'_

Beeping coming from his cell phone called for his attention then. Taking the thing to his hand and flipping it open, he saw that it was the phone's calendar, reminding him of something. _'What, the… __Domino__ Public__ High School__? Oh right! The school!'_

Before moving out of Tokyo, he had settled the whole transferring thing. Of all the Domino's high schools he had picked the public one because it was the easiest to transfer into. It didn't have entrance exam and seemed to welcome each and every student easily. Being public it probably wasn't top of the mark, but Yugi didn't mind. His last high school had been public too, and it had suited well enough for him. Where and how he schooled seemed to matter less and less these days.

The school would, according to his reminder, start the next week. He had also written that he needed to check the bus routes and get the uniforms. _'Easy enough to do,'_ he mused as he flipped the phone shut. After taking his grandfather's record, he sat up. _'Better have this done now that I remember… first things first; record back to the archive…'_

He walked back to his room, where he quickly uncovered the trapdoor from underneath his bed. _'Summer went by so quickly,'_ he mused as he descended down to the archive to put the book back to where it belonged to. _'Though that isn't much of a surprise isn't it. Mom died, I found out the inheritance grandfather left to me, the whole magic thing, that guy… and magic. Though I guess its better this way. I hate being bored and that's one thing I certainly haven't been since I moved here…'_

After putting the book back and sliding the glass panel shut, Yugi walked across the archive to the table. The golden box again there, enclosed in the plastic bag. The Magister's Guide was upstairs because though Yugi had read it few times, it had still many things to teach him. Brushing his fingers over the plastic bag, he hummed. _'Strange to think that the reason you were born was to protect this pretty little box…'_

With a shake of his head, he glanced around. Unlike in the beginning, now he could feel all the protections Shiai and Sugoroku had set to the archive. There were layers and layers of them and now Yugi knew that if he hadn't been a Mutou by birth, the wards of the room would've never let him into it - he would've never even found the trapdoor, since it was covered in layer of magic as well.

_'One day when I've studied enough, I'll add my spells here too,'_ he though with a little bit of pride. _'And truly join the ranks of the guardians. Though… will I have to start writing the records too?'_ he glanced at the shelves with slight trepidation. After a moment he sighed. _'I guess I could have a go at it. Just to try if I'm any good at it…'_ He shook his head headed back to the ladder. _'Yeah, I'll buy myself a note book or something while checking the bus routes and getting the uniform…'_

_xx_

Histories revealed and all that. Naita means Game Under Lights or something similar. Shiai means Match, Game, Bout, Contest or something similar. Chouhan means Dicegame, Gambling or something similar. It doesn't have any particular importance, but I'm sort of little bit of proud of managing to make the names game-related. Like Yugi which means Game and Sugoroku which is a children's dice game.

Thank you all for your reviews. For those wondering when the "comatose guy" is going to wake up, well... that would be a spoiler. And only person I spoil is my muse. Sorry. And yeah, there won't be romance in sense of kissing and hugging and having sex with people, but there will be emotional... development... stuff. Eventually.


	4. IV Games at school

**IV chapter**

**Games at school**

Domino Public High School was pretty much everything Yugi had thought it was. It was white building of decent size - four floors - and somewhat vague shape. It had probably been expanded along the years as Domino had grown in size. The school yard was rather plain, but you couldn't expect gardens of cherry trees from public school. All in all it was pretty normal, and exceeded none of his expectations, not that he had had many.

_'It'll be interesting to see if I can pull this off without messing everything up or going insane,'_ Yugi mused to himself while looking at the note where he had written the number of the classroom where he was supposed to go. _'I'm living in rich neighbourhood as a rich kid in a shop filled with magical games with a comatose man of magical origin, trying to study magic… And then I go to normal high school to more or less pretend that I'm a normal student. Somewhat normal.'_

With a chuckle he pushed the note to his pocket and headed for the school's entrance. _'I doubt this will be all that different from my last school. I'll probably be ignored as the weird loser kid again - which right now will probably be a good thing. All I can really hope for is that if there are bullies here they already have their primary preys all picked up. I hate dealing with bullies. Seems like I did nothing else in my junior high school…'_

After leaving his shoes to the shelves at the school entrance, Yugi headed inside. Some of the other students were giving him curious looks - probably because of the collar he had around his throat - but were too busy to stop by and actively stare. It was quite different compared to his first year in high school back in Tokyo. _'That was back before I dyed my hair. It's pretty weird to have dyed hair seem more normal than natural one. At least now I know the reason for that hairstyle thing… and why I need to re-dye my hair every two weeks even if I use permanent dye…'_

The classroom where he was supposed to be was noisy and filled with chatting people. Everyone seemed to be so in hurry to share everything about their summers with each other, that they barely noticed him. Feeling a bit relieved, Yugi found and place to sit a bit apart from the others to keep a safe distance. Then he looked at his class mates.

_'Okay, let see what we have here…'_ his eyes travelled over the class. His classmates seemed to vary. There were noisy and quiet people. Some had personalized their uniforms with accessories and such whilst others kept their uniforms bland. All in all it seemed like pretty normal glass of senior students. Few students had taken notice of him and were giving him curious glances. He didn't pay much attention to them as he finished his survey. Instead he turned his eyes to the window at his left and started ignoring the others - just like he had done in Tokyo.

_'Before I head to home today I need to visit the grocery store,'_ he mused to himself. _'Get some food… Oh, and I need to empty the leaf basked of the skimmer at the pond and clean the filters too… Man, keeping the pond clean will be a nightmare when fall kicks in. Oh well, at least I won't be bored.'_

Soon the teacher walked in and Yugi forced himself to pay attention. After the customary greetings and few words, the teacher turned his attention to him. "Could you come in front of the class?" the man asked and Yugi sat up. "Class, we have a new student joining in for this last year. Would you introduce yourself?"

"My name is Mutou Yugi," Yugi said. _'Insert polite "it's nice to meet you" and a little bow here and you have your model student,'_ he thought as he looked at the class, who were all looking at him. He kept his expression blank. _'Sadly I've long since lost any will to pretend to like school enough to be polite.'_

"Would you like to tell us little about yourself?" the teacher asked with a smile.

_'My father ran away from __Japan__ because he was scared of magic and my mother was bitter at me because I was born a boy and had magic whilst she didn't. When I was five I more or less brought to life some guy who has been sleeping ever since. Sadly the incident made my mother snap so she took me and ran from Domino, after which she held a grudge against my grandfather, probably over the whole magic thing. She also kept me ignorant about my family background and I only found out about any of this because she died last summer.'_

Yugi blinked. "Not particularly." _'Really, what could I say to these guys? And why should I say anything? They've already made their connections in their first and second year. They might be curious about me, but it will pass soon enough and then it will be like before. So why to bother?'_

His words were followed by a short silence. "Okay, you can sit down then," the teacher said a bit awkwardly. With a nod, Yugi walked back to his selected seat. The other students gave him curious and suspicious looks, exchanging little whispers amongst themselves. He ignored them and looked out of the window again.

_"If you just were a normal boy like the other boys, you might get friends!"_

The first class was spent looking back to the things the students were supposed have learned last year. The teacher and the students chatted a bit about their summers too, but Yugi didn't say anything. Instead he thought back to his house and distracted himself with the things he would do after it was the time for the first recess - and he was surrounded by his classmates.

He glanced up as group of girls leaned in to question him about everything. "Where do you live?", "Did you just move into Domino? Where did you live before?", "Do you have hobbies?", "What kind of music do you listen to?", "Is that a dog collar around your neck? How cool!", and so forth. He blinked at them with slight surprise. They were being more curious than he had suspected.

He blinked and wondered what to do. If he would be polite now people would expect him to continue being polite later. And he wasn't sure if he could be polite when things would turn out like they had been in Tokyo. "I live in a house," he then said. "I moved in during the summer and before that I lived somewhere else. I don't have any hobbies," _'which could be considered normal,'_ he added silently. "I don't listen to music. And it's not a dog collar," he finished. When the other students looked at him incredulously, he added; "It's just a collar. Dog collars have hoops for leashes. Mine doesn't."

"Why do you wear it?" one of the girls asked excitedly.

"Because… I want to wear it?" Yugi asked slowly. "Why else would I wear it?"

"I really like your earrings," another girl said, examining his pierced ears curiously.

"Uhhuh," Yugi murmured. In his last school he had been considered a bit lamer each time he had gotten a new piercing. His classmates had jeered something about trying to look cool at him. That was the reaction he was adjusted to. These girls… didn't act like he had expected.

"You live in a house?" one of the class's boys asked incredulously, causing few snickers in the room.

Yugi looked at the boy for a moment. _'Well, that wasn't all that witty, but he makes it sound lame in another way…'_ "Okay I lied. Actually, I live under a bridge in cardboard box," he said flatly. He heard someone smother laughter somewhere near by as he tilted his head to the side. _'Someone actually gets my stupid sense of humour?'_

"Could you be any ruder?" one of the other girls, ones that hadn't flocked around him, asked amusedly from her seat. Unlike most of the girls, she didn't seem to be part of group of girls though. Instead she had three guys sitting around her and by the looks of it, the four of them were a group of their own.

"Maybe. I've never tried. It would require actual effort so…" he trailed away. To his surprise, the girl actually chuckled - the guys seemed amused too. _'Wow. I wasn't being lame again? This is really weird.'_

"I'm Mazaki Anzu," the girl said as the other girls cleared away from around Yugi - apparently realising that he didn't want to talk to them.

"I would introduce myself again, but that would maybe make me a bit egoistical so I won't. Instead I will say something vaguely witty and hope that it's somewhat amusing…?" Yugi spoke almost carefully, testing the girl's reaction. She laughed. _'Okay, this is a first. I've never made anyone laugh before - and she's not laughing at me in that "you're such a loser" manner… this is getting even weirder.'_

"Nice to meet you," Mazaki chuckled and motioned at the guys around her. "These are Bakura Ryou and Honda Hiroto - and the blonde oaf is Jonouchi Katsuya," she introduced them almost flippantly and then smirked at the blonde who sent grimaces and glares at her. There was an air of good humour around them, though, as Honda and Bakura chuckled.

"It's… nice to meet you?" Yugi answered carefully.

"Likewise," Honda had Bakura answered while Jonouchi was kicking the underside of Mazaki's chair - Mazaki was very visibly pretending that she didn't feel anything, even as her chair jumped a bit. "Ignore Jonouchi. He's always like that," Honda advised.

"Hey. I'm a likable guy," Jonouchi argued indignantly. "Anzu just brings out the worse of me," he looked at Yugi. "Soo… how long have you lived here? Is everything familiar yet - have you yet familiarised the shortest route to the nearest arcade?"

"Just because you're junkie hooked to cheap arcade games doesn't mean that everyone is the same," Mazaki said flatly to the blonde. "Lameness isn't universal trait in humans."

"You're there almost as often as I am - I swear, the DDR there has been marked permanently by your shoe prints," Jonouchi stuck out his tongue. "And don't you deny it. You were there just yesterday."

"Tch!" the girl looked away as Honda and Bakura laughed again.

Watching their interaction, Yugi found himself smiling a little. Sure, he had seen lots similar interaction back in his former high school, but he had never been in any way part of it. Usually the people would look at him flatly before walking away to take their friendly interactions somewhere elsewhere.

As the four continued to interact, Yugi watched them curiously. It was easy to see that they had been friends for a while - they were so comfortable and casual around each other that it couldn't be just a fleeting thing. They were a mixed bunch, though. As Mazaki and Jonouchi continued to more or less playfully argue, Yugi came to the conclusions that they were the leaders of their group. Honda and Bakura were more quiet ones, enjoying the show the others put up. And by looking at how the other students in the class kept their distance to these four, Yugi could tell that their group was tight.

_'What a laid-back bunch of people. Mazaki has shortened her skirt. Jonouchi, by the look of it, has never ironed his uniform and he wears it very casually. Honda is more proper but he too is more casual than other guys in the class. Bakura seems to be the most proper one in this group - but that hair… white hair? Might be something he was born with like my hair, but… he doesn't bother with dyeing it, I guess,'_ Yugi mused silently as he watched them. Self consciously he brushed his dark bangs behind his pierced ear. _'Beside his white hair, mine would look almost normal. Or maybe not.'_

"Are you related to Mutou Sugoroku?" curt voice asked suddenly from behind Yugi, interrupting the conversation between Mazaki, Jonouchi, Honda and Bakura. Actually… the entire room seemed to turn quiet. Glancing over his shoulder, Yugi saw a tall brown haired teen standing behind him, looking down to him with a frown. Suddenly, everyone were looking at him again - him and the tall teen.

"You knew my grandfather?" Yugi asked, looking the teen from head to toe. Then he frowned. _'It's faint but it's there, the feel of magic. He's probably one of grandfather's customers - but one so young?'_

"So you are related to him," the tall teen frowned before offering his hand. "My name is Kaiba Seto."

Yugi's eyes flashed and then narrowed as he remembered the store records - he had gone through them when he had sorted through the Game Shop. Sugoroku had had tendency of keeping track of his customers and suppliers - especially the ones who owned potentially dangerous games. One of the most dangerous ones, a heavily cursed Shatranj board, Sugoroku had sold to Kaiba Seto.

Quickly Yugi sat up and took the tall teen's hand. "Mutou Yugi, pleased to meet you," he introduced himself almost formally. _'This guy owns one of the most dangerous games to pass through my grandfather's hands. Better to start on the right foot with this guy. Just the fact that my grandfather was willing to sell the game to him makes him someone to respect.'_

Kaiba seemed to understand what his greeting meant. For a moment the taller student's icy eyes were hesitant, before they steeled. "I would like to discuss something with you in private, if that is alright."

"Of course," Yugi immediately nodded, realising that it had to be about the business his grandfather had had with the other teen. He glanced at the group he had talking with previously. "If you would excuse me…" The four of them nodded with shocked expressions. Turning back to Kaiba, Yugi raised his eyebrow. The tall teen turned and left. Yugi followed.

"I must tell you that though my grandfather left everything to me, I'm still going through the shop," Yugi spoke in low voice while following the taller teen along one of the corridors. "It isn't open for business right now."

"But you are still his successor," Kaiba more stated than asked.

Yugi glanced at the taller teen and didn't say anything. _'Too many people around to talk about this openly.'_ He thought while pushing his hands to his pockets. _'Doesn't take an idiot to know that this is about the Shatranj board, though. He has magic on him so he has played with it. And since he is alive…'_ He smothered down a shiver and kept his eyes away from the much taller teen.

The taller teen led him up to the school rooftop. After checking that there was no one there, Kaiba turned to look at him seriously. "I want to get rid of it. The game your grandfather gave to me. Buy it from me."

Yugi frowned. He couldn't remember all his grandfather had written, but the bit about this one board he did remember - reading it had been like reading a ghost story. Shatranj was an ancient form of Chess - the original forefather of Chess, actually. The cursed board itself had been very old, from the third century, made and originally cursed in Persia. A thief had sold the board to Sugoroku originally. Sugoroku had been planning to never sell it for the simple reason that people who played with it died. Or more specifically, the loser died.

_'Game of life and death,'_ Yugi thought darkly. _'Quite a dangerous tool in hands of skilled Chess player. Especially since death by curse is usually looks natural - according to Grandfather anyway.'_

He glanced at Kaiba. _'This guy has used the board. Since he's still alive he obviously won - which means that someone is dead. And since there's no way grandfather sold that board without telling this guy what it was… it was probably fully intentional. A magical murder. But…'_ Yugi frowned. _'It seems to me like this guy really wants to get rid of the board now… so whatever he did, he didn't do it because he enjoys killing…'_

"Who was your opponent?" Yugi asked. The taller teen's eyes flashed and stubborn defiance settled into his face - he wasn't going to tell. "Did you think it would be that easy? That I would just buy a thing like that knowing what you did with it?" Yugi asked flatly. "Who was your opponent and why? Tell me and I might consider it." _'I don't like the idea of buying a murder weapon but I like the idea of it being out of my sight even less. Games like that need to be looked after.'_

Kaiba hesitated. "Sugoroku said that he would buy it back."

"Well, my grandfather knew you. I don't," Yugi shrugged. "I need a bit better reason than my grandfather's promise." _'Though I do trust his judgement. He wouldn't have sold that game without a good reason.'_

The taller teen hesitated again. Before he could say anything, though, the bell rang, signalling the end of the recess. Kaiba looked like he was between annoyance and relief as Yugi sighed. "I'll guess we'll finish this conversation later," Yugi murmured and motioned towards the stairs. "Shall we go back?"

The taller teen quickly composed himself, straightening his back. "Hmh," he snorted and headed back inside.

Yugi followed him with a small shake of his head. _'What a stiff guy. I hope we'll get our chat, though. I want to know why my grandfather sold the game to him and to what he used it - whom he killed and why.'_ When they returned to the classroom, Kaiba walked back to his seat like nothing had happened. Yugi shot look after him before shrugging his shoulders. _'I guess common ground doesn't mean that much after all. Oh well. It's not like I'm that eager to befriend a murderer anyway.'_

Taking his seat, Yugi noticed that the four he had been talking to before were all looking at him closely. "What?" he asked confusedly.

"You know Kaiba?" Mazaki asked curiously

"My grandfather did," Yugi shrugged.

"Does this make you a rich kid?" Jonouchi asked with narrowed eyes. "I mean, Kaiba is the richest guy in the city, and he isn't usually all friendly with people. Un-rich people anyway. Thinks everyone else is below him, the bastard…"

"Hmm? He's rich, hm?" Yugi asked curiously and glanced at the tall teen now sitting at the back of the class room. _'Well, you can't really tell much about a person when they're wearing the same thing everyone else wears. Though if he is rich, what is he doing in a public school like this one?'_After a moment of thinking, he stifled a snort. _'Though, technically I'm rich too. What am I doing here? Trying to get my high schooling done as quickly and as easily as possible. Maybe he's the same.'_

"So, are you?" Bakura asked carefully. "Rich I mean?"

Yugi turned his eyes back to the others and smiled a little. "You know, your face fools people, Bakura," he said amusedly, examining the white haired teen's handsome face. "I thought you were a decent guy, but I guess you're after my money after all."

Mazaki chuckled a little while Bakura blushed at his words. It seemed to ease the tension somewhat - at least Jonouchi stopped being suspicious. As the teacher returned and the class begun, Yugi sighed and tried to concentrate onto the now. _'School now, magic business later,'_ he decided. _'I'll think about Kaiba and his deadly game later.'_

Kaiba didn't want to finish their conversation that day, apparently - he even avoided Yugi. Worried and relieved in the same time, Yugi let the tall teen keep his distance. _'It had been years since grandfather has sold the game to him and by the looks of it, it has been at least a year since Kaiba played it. As quickly as I want this settled, I suppose giving it time isn't a bad idea. Can't rush things like magical murder confession, hm?'_

Yugi chatted a bit more with Mazaki and others during the breaks until the school ended. He was a bit peeved about the fact that he hadn't been able to finish the conversation with Kaiba, but decided to leave it be for now. Instead he concentrated onto normal things like getting food for himself before he headed home and once he was there he did some maintenance - like cleaning the skimmer and filters of the koi pond.

When everything was done, he sat down to do what he did on most evenings - reading through the records from the archive. These days he did it in the room of the comatose man. For some reason being around the man was strangely comforting in the otherwise empty house. And after he had taken one of the zaisu chairs there, it was also comfortable.

That day he did something different though. Thinking back to his school day, he started to talk. He spoke about the school building and the teachers, about the other students. "It's strange," he mused to the unresponsive man, his fingers absently drumming the cover the record number 2934. "Back in Tokyo I was usually disliked by people. And if not that, I was always ignored. Teachers and students alike, everyone seemed more comfortable pretending I wasn't there. Here people seem interested in me - some are sneaky about, some are bold about it… and I can't understand it."

He sighed. "I've never been interesting," he muttered. "Back in Tokyo I didn't do anything. I slept, ate, went to school, came to home and then I read some book the entire day. Nothing interesting ever happened, and I certainly never did anything interesting. I'm not interesting. Why would people be interested about me?"

After a moment of silence he rubbed his hand over his eyes and chuckled. "It's strange. I'm all mixed up. I started to dye my hair so that people wouldn't pick on me as much. When they started to ignore me, I started to wear leather. I made a collar out of my old belt and wore it around my neck. Who does something like that? I even pierced my ears. To seem a little different from the corners and backgrounds where I just seemed to fade… to seem different. They said I was looking for attention. I guess I was. And when I didn't get it, I pretended that I didn't care. And now that I get that attention I didn't get at Tokyo, I'm at loss at what I'm supposed to do with it."

He chuckled. "I'm a bit stupid like that. Lame really. But then, people are strange creatures. We need certain amount of everything to be happy. We don't want to be ignored, but we don't want to be picked on either. Little bit of attention is nice, but the centre of it is a place where only certain sort of people are comfortable. We are social creatures and don't want to be alone - even those who love privacy can feel alone… weird bipolar things we are."

After staying silent for a moment, he turned to look at the man. Nothing had changed. "At least you aren't bipolar," Yugi chuckled, examining the regal face for a moment. "With you I know always what to expect. You're the exact same every time I look at you. That's kind of comforting… but even so, I think you should wake up," he smiled a little. "I want to meet you."

_'Though this guy has been sleeping for so long that I don't even know if he can wake up on his own,'_ the teen thought with slight worry. _'I would help him along, but I don't know how. I'm just a beginner in magic and I doubt anything else will work. What could I do, try to wake him up with a kiss as if he was Sleeping Beauty? No way am I going to kiss some dusty guy…'_

He chuckled and leaned against the bed where the guy lay. "I need to think of a name for you. Can't stay as Just Some Comatose Guy forever, can you?"

Later when he checked the man's pulse, it had sped up. Now it beat once every thirty seconds instead of forty. Slowly, very slowly, the unresponsive man was starting to wake up.

xx

Yay, we finally got some other characters into the story. And though I've said this before, I will say it again. There won't be yaoi. there won't be het either. In fact, there won't be no pairings at all. This ain't a romance story. And _Magister_ was a title of the Middle Ages, given to a person in authority, or to one having a licence from a university to teach philosophy and the liberal arts (according to dictionary). I prefer to think of it as title of person who has mastered something to the point they can teach it.


	5. V Game of old

**V chapter**

**Game of old**

_'I guess Kaiba doesn't want to talk today either,'_ Yugi thought while pushing his books back to his backpack. He glanced at the tall brown haired teen who was already heading out of the room. _'I think that guy is avoiding me. If he keeps this up, I'll end up getting the impression that he might not like me.'_ He chuckled at the thought. _'Though, according to… everyone, Kaiba doesn't like anyone.'_

Yugi's neighbours had ended up being a well of information when it came to Kaiba. It wasn't all that surprising, though, since Yugi's neighbours and Kaiba lived in same world… sort of anyway. Difference between Kaiba and Yugi's neighbours was the fact that Kaiba probably had more money than all Yugi's neighbours had combined.

Kaiba Seto was the son of Kaiba Gozaburo, the former richest man of Domino. According to Yugi's neighbours, Kaiba Gozaburo had become rich manufacturing arms. However, about two years ago, something started to happen in the Kaiba Corp. And year ago Kaiba Gozaburo died - had a heart attack apparently. Somehow the Kaiba Corporation ended in Seto's hands along with all of Gozaburo's wealth.

_'Knowing that and knowing about Shatranj… the logical assumption would be that he killed his father because of the money,'_ Yugi thought while leaning back in his chair. _'But I don't think that's it. There has to be something else. There's no way grandfather would've sold that dangerous game to a money hungry person…'_ He frowned. _'Not that I knew Sugoroku or anything, but the things he left behind tell enough about his character. He's not the kind of person to make flimsy decisions.'_

"Um… Mutou?" careful voice intruded Yugi's thoughts. Looking up he saw Bakura standing beside him, looking hesitant. "Could I ask you something?"

_'Being called Mutou is weird. Everyone back in __Tokyo__ just called me by my given name…'_ "Sure," Yugi shrugged. He glanced over the classroom, bit surprised to find that it was empty. _'Oh right. Last class was the last one for the day. What am I still doing here when I could be on my way home…?'_ "What do you have on mind?"

Bakura looked a bit embarrassed as he scratched his neck and looked away. "Okay, this is probably going to sound really weird, but… My dad wants your phone number," the white haired teen said, before rushing to explain. "I told him yesterday about how we got new student, and when he heard your name he got sort of excited… which hasn't happened in a long time… and…"

Yugi raised his eyebrows. _'When he heard my name…?'_ he mused, tilting his head to the side. "What does your dad do? His occupation I mean." _'Maybe he knew grandfather. And since he wants my phone number, it must be work related - or magic related, however you want to put it.'_

"He is… well, he was archaeologist," Bakura murmured, taking the empty seat beside Yugi. "But he hasn't been working for two years now. He hasn't gotten any funding to go out on any expeditions, I guess… He's been pretty depressed about it for a long while now but when he heard your name he… he acted like he used to, before he lost his funding."

Yugi nodded thoughtfully. _'Supplier then. What grandfather was willing to pay for good old game was probably enough to keep a hard working archaeologist, well, working. Bakura's dad might be like that - grandfather might've been the man's entire funding. And when grandfather died…'_ he sighed. _'But I'm not like grandpa. The shop isn't in business. I'm not even sure if I will ever open it…'_

After moment of thinking about it, he started to feel a bit guilty. It could be that Bakura's dad had no other source of income - at least that was what it sounded like. "Did your dad say what he wanted to talk to me about?"

"Well… no, but he muttered about finally selling something," Bakura frowned a little. "Now that I think about it, just before he ran out of funding he was really excited about something he had found in his last dig at Egypt. Said that with it he could fund many expeditions… it was really weird because according to some of his co-workers the thing was worthless."

Yugi's eyes flashed. _'The guy found something big just before grandfather died - and since grandfather was probably the only person who would understand the things worth, he wasn't able to sell it on. Some magically priceless things are worthless to those who know nothing of magic…'_ he frowned. _'But… I'm not a shopkeeper like grandfather was! What would I do with a thing like that…?'_

But even as he thought that, something inside him had moved. Part of him felt excitement, part of him was itching to find out what this archaeologist guy had found. The beginner magician in him wanted to know. After a moment, he sighed. "Do you have your dad's phone number? I'll call him myself."

Bakura seemed surprised, but quickly pulled out his cell phone. "All right," he murmured. Yugi dug out his phone as well, and quickly dialed the number Bakura spoke out. Once he had gotten it all, he saved the number to the phone's memory. "I'll give your dad a call later," Yugi promised and pushed the phone back to his pocket. Bakura nodded, looking both relieved and confused.

"Do you know why he would want to talk to you?" the white haired teen asked.

"He probably knew my grandfather," Yugi shrugged. "Grandfather had many connections while he was still alive. When he died it left all sorts of loose ends out there. I guess I have to tie them up."

Bakura nodded confusedly. "What kind of person was your grandfather? Kaiba knew him too, right?"

"Grandfather was… a collector. Kind of."

"So… dad hoped that he could sell that thing to your grandfather," Bakura frowned. "And now he thinks he can sell it to you?" he looked at Yugi confusedly - and maybe little suspiciously too. "Can he?"

"Don't know yet. I think I need to see it first," Yugi shrugged. "What's your dad's name?"

"Shiagari. Bakura Shiagari."

_'I wonder what Bakura made of that conversation,_ Yugi mused after he had left the school and made his way to the bus stop. _'And I wonder what he thinks about it - about his father wanting to sell something to me. It's a bit obvious that his dad hasn't told him about his dealings with grandfather - but then again, it isn't exactly good and normal subject of conversation, magic. Even if you could talk about it without sounding like raving lunatic… who would believe you?'_

He thought back to the comatose man and smiled to himself. _'Magic isn't exactly something one can easily have faith in. Our society teaches us of the miracles of science and such and magic is a mere fairytale. Teaches us to ask for proof of everything. And magic is bad at that. You have to have certain inborn skill to be able to see the proof.'_

If the situation had been different and he didn't know the history of the comatose man, Yugi would've assumed that it was just a normal human being in coma. Nothing special about it. But since he knew, the man was his proof. The little nudge that made him believe and accept.

_'Though, if this Shiagari guy has something special in his possession, something he thought grandfather would appreciate… wasn't that proof enough to tell his son?'_ Yugi looked up as the bus came, and quickly made his way inside. _'Could be that he just doesn't want to tell. Maybe he doesn't want to involve his kid to this sort of business. Not only is magic a bit dangerous, what Shiagari did for grandfather… probably wasn't legal.'_ Yugi shivered a bit at the thought of having illegally acquired artefacts in his house. _'Though I'm planning on buying a murder weapon from Kaiba. How is that any better? The Shatranj was originally bought from a thief anyway.'_

_'Okay, let's not think of how legal all this is. Magic works despite the laws of nature, it's not like the laws of men are going to stop it any better.'_ Yugi shook his head. Then he sighed. _'Maybe I should start paying attention what I say and do around people. If Bakura is ignorant despite the fact that his father is in on this, there is reason for it. I shouldn't flaunt mysteries before his eyes. Actually, I shouldn't do it before anyone's eyes. Ugh, this thinking is starting to give me a headache.'_ Rubbing his fingers over his forehead, he tried to ease the starting tension. _'I'll relax a bit when I get home. I'll think about this all later.'_

But the thoughts of magic wouldn't leave him alone. By the time he reached his home, he was wondering what sort of game Bakura Shiagari had found. _'I should've asked Bakura what it looked like or something. Might be that he doesn't even know, but if he knew where it came from then that would've been enough…'_ He mused while heading upstairs. After checking in on the comatose guy and finding no changes, he threw his backpack to his room before heading to kitchen to get something to drink

_'Bakura said that his dad had thought that he could fund many expeditions with the thing he found,'_ Yugi thought after sitting down. _'Many. Like it was something better than the games he had possibly encountered before. Can't be anything as simple as charmed game, then. It has to be something special…'_ after a moment he groaned. _'Damn it, now I want to know what it is!'_

After a moment of furious thinking, Yugi grumbled and picked his phone. Finding the number, he stared at it for a moment. Then he changed the name from Bakura's dad to Bakura Shiagari. "I should've asked for his name before I saved the number," He murmured while weighing the phone in his hand. "To call or not to call, that is the question…"

He ended up calling. Leaning his elbow to the edge of the kitchen table, he listened to the receiving tone. The voice that answered the phone was that of apparently bored male. "Hello," was almost drawled to the phone in way that made Yugi believe that the guy didn't expect any interesting news - ever. For some reason, it made him smile.

"Is this Bakura Shiagari?" Yugi asked and received affirmative grunt. "Oh good. I'm your son's classmate, Mutou Yugi. Your son said that might have something to talk about with me?" Next thing he heard from the phone was a crash of some sort and low toned cursing. _'Maybe he fell over?'_ Yugi listened to the phone curiously. _'My name must be pretty powerful if it can knock people over even through the phone.'_

"Ahem, yes," he was finally answered somewhat properly. "Yes. You're Sugoroku's successor?"

Yugi stopped. _'Sugoroku's successor? Kaiba said that too. I guess I am, but… why and how do these people automatically assume that I am? Did grandfather tell them about me or something?'_ "In a way," he answered to the phone.

There was a short silence in the other end before the man spoke. "I have something Sugoroku might've wanted to buy. Actually, I know he would've bought it, but he died before I got the chance to show it to him… if you're his successor…"

"Let's cut to the chase. What is it?" Yugi said rather bluntly. _'I know it's a game and I know it's something grandfather would've bought. What I want to know is what it is. And why is it special.'_ "The game, what is it?"

"Ah, right. It's Senet board from around 1000 BC, I found it two years ago from the Valley of the Kings," Bakura Shiagari answered quickly. "I've seen lot of magical games before and passed them onto your grandfather - for a price - but nothing like this."

"You can feel magic then?" Yugi asked carefully. _'A magician?'_

"A little bit. Usually it's no more than hunch or intuition, but with this one I can actually feel it. There's something more than wood in that board."

_'I guess not. Grandfather did write that there are some people who can sense magic - some can even see spirits now and then - but those who can actually perform magic are rare. Something about the ancient bloodlines being diluted over the years…'_ Yugi mused silently. "What sort of sensation do you get from the board?" he asked curiously.

"Huh?"

"Feeling. Does it feel heavy or light, comfortable or awkward… what kind of feeling do you get when you touch the thing?" Yugi asked, hoping to gauge what kind of magic there was in the board. Then the man hesitated, he spoke again. "It doesn't matter how strange or silly it seems. Just tell me what it feels like."

"Well…" the man hesitated and from the sound of his voice Yugi could immediately tell that the man felt like he was about to make an ass out of himself. "The first time I touched it back in Egypt it felt like it was… stuck. Like I had to use all my strength to pull it out - and it was just sitting there, light as a feather."

_'The thing is possessed!'_ Yugi's eyes widened before he turned serious. _'And since this guy can feel that it's different from the other games he has handled, it must be a pretty strong spirit.'_ "You know where the game shop is, right?" he asked. "Bring the board here as soon as you can. I can't tell for sure yet, but I might buy it from you."

"Really?" the man sounded surprised.

"Maybe. I need to see it first," Yugi frowned. _'It could be that the spirit wants to stay with this guy. If that is the case then buying it will not be a good idea. But if the board doesn't… then I will buy it. Possessed boards are too rare and too powerful even at their weakest to be left unattended.'_ "When can you bring it?"

"Right now! I'll be there in half an hour."

"I'll see you then," Yugi bid his farewell and flipped the phone shut. After looking at it for a moment, he got up. After picking his check book - which had yet to be used - from the kitchen drawer, he headed downstairs. _'There are over three hundred games here. All of them are magical in one way or another,'_ he thought as he stepped down to the backroom. _'But most of these games are either charmed, cursed or blessed. Haunted or possessed games… there are only handful. And of that handful only one is truly powerful.'_

His grandfather had explained it in the books. It took something special to haunt a game. Anyone could stick around after death over some little thing - if you forgot your school work before your death, you could hang onto it as that 'unfinished business' element. But to haunt a game…

_'Spirit haunting a game. The spirit must've been a great individual with a great mind,'_ Yugi mused, his eyes trailing over the shelves before they came to rest upon an old Goban. _'But the spirit also must've been a great player. Someone who was possibly undefeated. But… to possess a board game as ancient as Senet that requires near divine intervention. Games don't allow themselves to be possessed that easily. They aren't games for nothing after all.'_

He passed by the Goban. It was waiting. _'Each game waits for a player. That is the fate of every game. But a possessed board only have one or two players. No one else can truly play with them. Just one or two.'_ He smiled sadly at the stained board. _'Your player will come. Eventually.'_

Walking to the shop itself, Yugi clicked the lights on. He had, while going through the shop, cleaned the place up thoroughly. Now that the sheets weren't there and the dust was gone, it wasn't as creepy as a room as it had been in the beginning. _'Why I left thing as they were, I'm not sure. This place is supposed to be my home, but I left it as a shop. Though I don't really need this place and these games need to be kept somewhere…'_ Somewhere a possibility of continuing the business where his grandfather had left on raised its head, but Yugi quickly pushed it back down. _'Seventeen year olds don't manage shops! Especially not nearly illegal magical ones!'_

With a snort he headed through the shop and to the porch, where he sat down to wait. _'Though what could this be called then? I'm looking to possibly buy a possessed game. And then there is the Shatranj board Kaiba owns, which I will maybe buy too - unless its history is too bloody, that is. The game shop isn't in business, but apparently I am… but what could I do? These games are too dangerous to be left alone…'_

It took good half an hour before a car - one older and scruffier than those usually seen in the neighbourhood - drove near and parked outside his gate. The man who stood up from car was also a bit scruffier than the people of the neighbourhood. His button up shirt was slightly stained and askew - there was a button or two missing. The jeans the man was wearing were faded and worn. His hair was messy and there was stubble on his chin.

_'Easy to see that this guy hasn't worked for a while,'_ Yugi mused as the man headed towards his gate, holding something wrapped in brown paper. The guy had sandals in his feet. _'Or he just doesn't bother with appearances.'_

"You Mutou Yugi?" the man asked, leaning onto the locked gate. "You're shorter than I thought. Mind opening the gate?"

Yugi snorted and sat up. "I'm Yugi and thanks. I was always worried I would grow too tall," he said while walking up to the gate. After unlocking it, he stepped aside to let the scruffy guy inside. "You must be Bakura Shiagari. You're pretty much what I expect after hearing that you've been unemployed for two years."

"No need to get mean," the man said, looking at him with measuring look.

"You started it," Yugi shrugged and closed the gate. Then he looked at the thing the man in his hands. He couldn't feel anything from it and at first he was disappointed. Then he realised what the wrapping was. "Was that made by my grandfather?" he asked, looking at the carefully painted pictographs in the wrapping. _'Probably one of those wrappings made to contain the magic of the thing. Some of the cursed games at the shop are wrapped like that.'_

"Yeah. At his time he made lot of the wrapping for me in case I encountered something like this," Shiagari patted the game.

"I see," Yugi nodded. _'Makes sense. Probably all the suppliers have some kind of protective wrappings or boxes to contain the games.'_ He motioned towards the house. "Shall we go inside?"

"Sure."

Yugi led the man into the shop. While he closed the door after them, the man looked around curiously. "Man, this place hasn't changed a bit in the last two years," Shiagari murmured, looking at the table with the tarot cards. "Even those are in the exact same position as they were years ago."

"Well, this place has been untouched since grandfather died. I just cleaned the place up since I didn't see any reason to change anything," Yugi glanced at the tarot cards. He smiled a little. _'That reading was the last grandmother gave to grandfather before she caught ill. Since then grandfather didn't move the cards even an inch. I won't either.'_ He looked at the man. "So. Show me the game."

"Right," Shiagari nodded and walked to the counter. Following after him, Yugi watched how the man untied the string holding the wrapping in place before carefully unwrapping the game from underneath it. As the paper stopped blocking the magic, Yugi nearly stepped back in shock.

_'Powerful, very powerful,'_ he thought while withholding a gasp. _'Maybe even more powerful than the most powerful haunted board in the shop. This spirit must be old - probably as old as the board! A three thousand year old spirit… from __Egypt__…'_ Yugi frowned. _'No way is this a coincidence.'_

"I know it looks a bit worn," Shiagari murmured while putting the wrapper aside. "The years haven't been kind to it, but… it's still magical, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Yugi answered. He walked around the counter, trying to get adjusted to the power coming from the board in waves. Forcing his eyes to the board, he took it in. It was pretty typical Senet. Thirty squares arranged in three-by-ten rectangle. When it had been made, it had been painted blue, and there were carvings at the sides detailing some ancient scene. The years had almost worn all of the blue paint away and the scene was now unrecognisable.

_'Will you let me touch you?'_ Yugi mused, reaching his hand to the board. He felt almost electric spark of magic at his finger tips when he reached for one of the tiny drawers where the game pieces were. _'I guess not. Very protective of yourself, I guess.'_ He looked up. "You haven't been able to open the compartments, have you?"

Shiagari shook his head. "No. Well, I haven't really tried after the first time when I got a shock when I tried, but I guess I couldn't open them now either. I figured there was a spell locking them or something."

_'The game - or its spirit anyway - is just unwilling to allow itself to be played. I guess this means neither one of us two is destined to play this game,'_ Yugi mused. _'I thing it's a safe bet to say that all the game pieces are still inside.'_ He pulled his hand back from the drawer and instead trailed his fingers over the squares. _'Yes, this one is very powerful. I can feel the power all the way up my elbow. Hmm… I think it's best that I buy this one. I think this board will be a bit safer in my hands rather than Shiagari's.'_

"How much do you want from it?" Yugi asked, pulling his hand away.

"Well…" Shiagari pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. "I was thinking something along the lines of this, but…"

Yugi looked down to the paper and frowned. Quickly he ran his mind through the prices his grandfather had been willing to pay. Then he looked up to the man. "You're kidding, right?" he asked, making the man frown disappointedly. "This kind of sum is about right for your every day average charmed board, but for this one? No way." Quickly he pulled out his check book and wrote down more fitting number. "This looks more like it," he said, showing the number to the man.

"You added three zeros," Shiagari looked shocked.

"Yes. Anything less would be an insult to this board," Yugi said, looking at the board with serious look. _'This spirit probably can't even understand me, but I rather not insult a spirit this strong. Besides… Shiagari can probably use the money.'_ He looked up again. "Do we have a deal?"

"Yes! Of course!" the man quickly nodded, not about to argue against the money.

"Good," Yugi murmured, quickly filling the check before taking it off the book and handing it to the man. "Here you go."

"Thank you very much!" the man smirked happily while looking down to the slip of money-worthy paper. Then the man looked at him carefully. "Does this mean you're going to continue your grandfather's shop like he did?" he asked. "I mean, with this I can easily start working again. I can work as a supplier again."

Yugi sighed and rubbed his temple. "I don't know yet. I need to think about it," he said. _'Only reason I bought this board was because it's safer here than where ever Shiagari kept it. Though… isn't that what the shop was about? That's why my grandfather collected these games, to keep them safe - and keep people safe from them…'_

"Well, if you decide to start dealing you know my phone number," the scruffy archaeologist said while carefully putting the check to his wallet.

"Hmm…" Yugi nodded, looking at the man thoughtfully. "Your son doesn't know about any of this, does he?"

"No," Shiagari frowned a little. "Ryou's not… he doesn't have what it takes to deal with this world. I'm not magician or anything, I can barely sense magic, but it has led me into trouble too many times. I don't want to involve him in that."

Yugi nodded. "I see." _'And I'll keep that in mind whenever I talk to him.'_

"Well… it was pleasure doing business with you, Mutou Yugi. I gotta get going back home, Ryou was making dinner when I left, I wouldn't want to piss him off by being late," the scruffy man grinned a little. Yugi nodded and watched how the man walked away from the shop. Then he turned his eyes back to the Senet board.

"Now what will I do with you?"

xx

Ookay, another chapter here, yay... and stuff. Does it seem like this thing doesn't have a plot? If someone is somehow confused about the plot, let me tell you what it is: Yugi inherits magical game shop and then some - and then tries to deal with the whole thing. For now that's it. I'm not sure about any villains yet but I'm pretty sure that there won't be any world saving or anything. Was the first chapter really creepy? I had no idea. And thank goodness for FFnet undoing whatever they did that managed to erase my pagebreaker thingies. I was worried for a moment there.

Thank you all for your comments and once more my apologies for possible typing and grammar errors.


	6. VI Game of Death

**VI Chapter**  
**Game of Death**

Yugi took a deep breath while holding up the bottle. Then, while making circle by by pressing the tips of his thumb and forefinger togehter, he tilted the bottle to pour the milk in the circle. Except he was going to pour it into the circle of his fingers instead of any glass container. Concentrating hard, he carefully poured - and smiled widely when the milk didn't fall to the table. Instead it gathered just underneath the circle of his fingers, as if to invisible little bag.

"Alright," he murmured while putting the bottle down and holding his hand up. The milk floated after it in loopy half-ball form. Carefully he squeezed his fingers until the loop closed. The half-ball was squeezed into actual ball. Raising his free hand underneath the small ball of floating milk, Yugi pulled his other hand away. The ball stayed floating over his palm.

_'I think I've almost gotten this down,'_ he thought. _'Now concentrate…'_ Frowning, he stared at the ball. It shook a little and then slowly started to sharpen, first forming a lumpy cube which sharpened slowly to near perfection. Then it turned into a small pyramid. _'Yeah, this I getting easier with every try…'_

It was the next step of his magic studies. After he had gotten down how to form a protective magic field around an object, he needed to learn how to manipulate it. Shape manipulation had been the next step and that had been done by liquid - since liquid needed a solid, perfect shield or it would leak out, it was a perfect thing to try with. Sadly, it had left Yugi's kitchen table quite wet.

Smiling a little, Yugi made the small pyramid of milk rotate slowly over his finger. Then he broke into a yawn. _'I managed to master this thing but I still would've rather slept,'_ he thought, rubbing his eyes with his hand. _'That damn game kept me up all night.'_

The Senet game he had bought from Shiagari was even now pulsing with magic downstairs. It had been doing that the entire night, just sending almost curious waves of magic around itself as if to feel out where it was. _'Since Shiagari kept the thing in that wrapping for two years straight, I didn't have the heart to wrap it up again. It must've been horrible for the spirit of that board, being contained like that. But… I thought that the spirit would be nice and calm like the spirit of the Goban. But noo, it has to go at it the entire night.'_

He floated the cube over the bottle of milk and slowly poked a hole to the bottom of the cube. Then he watched how the milk slowly dribbled back to the bottle. _'I'm usually pretty solid sleeper when I manage to go to sleep, but that thing didn't even allow me to fall asleep.'_ He sighed. _'I hope it'll calm down soon. I have school today and I don't fancy falling asleep during class. It's not like I can tell why I wasn't sleeping to the teacher. "Magical game with a soul inside it kept me up all night…" Yeah, right.'_

Once the milk was back in the bottle, he sat up. _'My eyes feel dry. I'll wash my face, maybe they'll stop itching… man I'm tired, but I got to go to school,'_ he headed towards the bathroom _'Buying a coffee maker might not be a bad idea. Or better yet, espresso maker.'_

After washing his face, he glanced at his reflection. _'Damn it, I need to dye my hair again soon,'_ he mused, raking his fingers through his bangs. The colour underneath was again starting to shine through the dark dye. _'I just dyed it two weeks ago and I did it with permanent colour again. Stupid ancient lineage of weird eyes and weirder hair… though it's somewhat amusing to think that every man of my family for centuries has had the same freaky hair..'_

_'I'll pick some hair dye on my way to home,'_ he thought while heading out of the bathroom. He glanced, like he usually did, to the room of the comatose man. _'What a surprise, no change whatsoever. Seems like the Senet doesn't bother him… guy doesn't even know how lucky he is. Oh well. I should get ready for school.'_

Some time later he was heading to the bus stop to wait for the bus he took ever morning to get to his high school - good half an hour early. _'Aah, blessed magical… uh, feellessness? Whatever. No Senet boards here to hammer my senses with incessant magical pulses in any case. I wonder if you can overtax your magical senses, though. I feel weird sort of tingling now.'_

Rubbing his slightly aching neck, he sat down to the bus stop's simple bench and leaned his head back. _'Okay. Next thing I need to do is to stay awake the entire day. I did it when I was reading the Magister's Guide for the first time, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem… well, except for the fact that I have school this time, last time I managed to stay awake by concentrating onto cleaning. In school I just sit and take notes. Ooh yeah, I'm falling asleep at class.'_

_'Okay, okay, let's distract ourselves from the impending boredom that shall lead to uncomfortable napping against hard wooden desks, hmm..'_ Yugi frowned. _'I've mastered the hardness and shape manipulation of the simple protective magic. Hypothetically I should be able to make any shape of shield on the spot now and make it as hard as I want to. That's still far cry from making wards or anything since those need to be connected to something so that they will stay up even after I stop concentrating, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.'_

_'Next thing I think was the quality of protection,'_ he thought back to the Magister's Guide. _'What you protect against. Magical or physical attacks, temperature changes, fire, water… I think grandfather listed even air to the things you can protect against. I already know that if I make it right, even liquid can't pass through the shields, so I guess it's possible. Just make the shield right quality and it can protect you against almost anything.'_

_'But… if I remember it right, grandfather made visibility the next learning method. Invisibility shields - shield that protects against being seen?'_ he tilted his head to the side. _'What we see is basically light and how it reflects on things, right…? How can you protect against that? By making a shield that blocks light? Wouldn't that make the protected thing just a dark spot then?'_

_'Though it is magic, so it might now follow the laws of physics - it doesn't seem to be following any other laws either,'_ he chuckled. _'I need to accept that where magic is concerned, science just doesn't apply. It might be the same thing as the hardness shield. I just need to protect something against being seen... Gah, I'll just read that chapter of the Magister's Guide when I get back home. It should explain things. I hope anyway.'_

_'Though… if I learn to protect things from being seen, does this mean… if I make that sort of shield around myself, I could turn invisible?'_ he smiled a little. _'The ultimate eavesdropping technique! Or better yet, sneaking technique. With shields to protect against being seen, maybe even being heard… Damn, magicians would make excellent criminals. That might explain why some of grandpa's supplies were thieves, though. Magical thieves, what a scary thought.'_

By the time the bus came, Yugi had thought of about dozen more or less illegal activities where you could excel if you were magician. _'Though I guess what kind of magician you are also counts,'_ he mused as he sat down in the bus. _'According to Magister's Guide, there are other sort of magics too. Mine is defensive, but there are offensive sections of magic too. I probably will never be able to use them since for three thousand years my family has been concentrating on protective magic.'_

_'If a magician could, for example, make a fireball…then he would be pretty successful pyromaniac,'_ he thought somewhat approvingly. Then he stopped his trail of thought. _'Why am I thinking about using magic in illegal acts? I should think of how magician with ability to use water would be excellent fireman, not that bit about pyromaniacs… Okay, that's it. I shall never again stay awake the entire night. Apparently it turns me into potential criminal.'_ For some reason the thought made him almost giggle. Then he sighed heavily. _'I need sleep…'_

He had somehow ended up humming some tune he had heard his mother sing when the bus stopped by his school. While heading towards the school building, he tried to remember the lyrics of the song. _'Mom had a beautiful voice,'_ he mused while trying to rub the dry feeling out of his tired eyes. _'She used to sing a lot too. Whenever she cooked and took a shower - and when I was little brat and scared of the dark… she used to sing… I sort of miss that.'_

_'Actually I miss lot of things about her. Even the more or less illogical taboos of hers,'_ he sighed as he stepped inside the school building. _'I just never stop to think about it. It's a useless thing anyway, to miss someone who is dead. It just makes you sad.'_

Taking of his shoes and quickly putting them to his locker, Yugi sighed. _'I think growing up without a father taught me not to miss people. When I was little I used to ask after dad a lot even though I couldn't remember him. Maybe because I saw how the other boys played with their fathers… Mom explained that it was dad's choice to leave and it wouldn't help me any to miss him. No matter how I would miss him, he wouldn't come back. So… I won't miss mom either. Not actively anyway.'_

He grumbled quietly while pushing his hands into his pockets and heading towards the classroom. _'No more sleepless nights for me. First I turn into potential criminal and start thinking about past. Ugh. I have my hands filled with the present as it is.'_

"Mutou," curt voice interrupted his musings - voice which just because of the tone could only belong to Kaiba Seto.

"Uh?" Yugi asked, glancing the taller teen over his shoulder. "Morning Kaiba. Lovely morning to be tired as heck. Wassap?"

Kaiba blinked with surprise before raising an eyebrow. "You look like hell. Long night?"

Yugi made a affirmative grunt before looking at the taller teen curiously. Kaiba had an interesting look about his eyes. "Something on your mind?" the shorter teen asked. _'About the Shatranj? Please let it be about the Shatranj, I want that matter settled as soon as possible.'_ "Something you want to share?"

Kaiba glanced around and nodded. "Yes. But not here. I… if you wouldn't be adverse to it, I would like to talk to you at my home."

_'Ah. Don't feel comfortable about talking anywhere elsewhere? No wonder really. You don't want to confess to murder just anywhere. At his home he can be sure that he won't be confessing to anyone but me… I guess.'_ Yugi smiled. "I accept your invitation," he simply said. "Today?" _'Some people would maybe be a bit suspicious about such invitation - especially knowing what the subject of conversation is going to be… but most of people can't create magical shields. I'm not good yet, but I think I'm good enough to protect myself.'_

"If it suits you," Kaiba nodded.

"It, ah… if you have some coffee at your house, it suits me," Yugi chuckled, rubbing his eyes again. "I was sort of kept up all night and I don't exactly have the physical fitness to stay awake even twenty-four hours straight, not to mention about…" he glanced at the near by clock and tried to calculate how long he had been awake. "You know, I don't have the mental capability to count right now."

The taller teen seemed actually a little amused. "I have coffee."

"Then I shall gladly visit you," Yugi chuckled again. Then he sighed heavily. "I babble when I'm tired too, huh?" seeing the other teen giving him a weird look. "Never mind." _'Let's keep the insanity inside, shall we?'_ Standing up straighter, he attempted to gather his wits while glancing at Kaiba. "Shall we head to class?"

"Lets," Kaiba nodded.

Once they entered the classroom, Kaiba acted - again - like nothing had happened. Yugi paid no mind to it. _'I guess that's just the sort of guy he is,'_ he mused while taking a seat. _'Though… Anyone who has used a cursed game in their past would probably be like that. Even those who survive are marked by curses…'_ He glanced Kaiba from the corner of his eye. _'Kaiba certainly has been. And I doubt he can do anything to wash that stain from his person. I wonder if he knew before he played… if grandfather told him…'_

"Morning, Mutou," soft voice greeted him, making him turn his eyes forward. It was Bakura Ryou - who after taking in what he looked like began to frown. "Are you alright? You don't look too good."

"Just a sleepless night," Yugi waved dismissingly with his hand. "I'll live." Thankfully Jonouchi and Honda joined them just then, distracting Bakura from him. Leaning his elbow against the desk and his chin against his palm, Yugi watched their interactions as they bid each other good morning. He stifled a yawn. _'Must be nice having friends…'_

Only by thinking about the upcoming conversation with Kaiba Yugi managed to keep himself awake through the day. The interactions between Jonouchi, Honda, Bakura and Mazaki helped a bit, but they seemed a bit mellowed down for some reason. The four of them had been more open in the first day. _'First they're awkward, then they pick on you and then they ignore you.'_ Yugi mused tiredly. _'The cycle of school life. For me anyway.'_

When the classes finally ended, Yugi paid a quick visit to nearest bathroom where he splashed some ice cold water to his face in hopes of waking himself up properly. _'I gotta be about my wits when taking with Kaiba. Especially if he ends up deciding that he's better off without me knowing about the Shatranj and what he did with it. I need to be able to concentrate if I need to make shields…'_

When he stepped out of the bathroom, Kaiba was waiting for him in the corridor. "Are you done? My driver should be waiting already."

"You have a driver?" Yugi asked curiously, as they headed towards the lockers to fetch their shoes. "That must be nice."

"You don't?" Kaiba actually seemed surprised.

"I'm perfectly content using public transit," Yugi shrugged. _'It's what I've been doing since forever… it's what I'm comfortable with. Actually, even though I have the money for it, I never even thought of getting myself a driver. And thinking of it now seems… pretty silly. Driver, just for me? Absolutely ridiculous.'_

Kaiba gave him a look, taking in the bracelets, earrings and the collar Yugi had. Then he turned his eyes away as he took his shoes from his locker. "Sugoroku was a bit eccentric too."

"You're calling me weird?" Yugi asked, feeling more confused than insulted. He quickly dropped his shoes to the floor and pushed his feet into them

"He didn't act like man of wealth usually acts, and you certainly don't act like how the inheritor of such wealth usually acts," the taller teen said almost casually, glancing at him. Then he snorted softly. "If I didn't know better, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between you and the other punks here."

Yugi eyed the other teen coolly. "Thanks," he said flatly. "I wasn't rich before this summer though. During last semester there really was no difference between me and the other punks as you put it." With a sigh he stretched his hands. "I'm not yet all comfortable or adjusted to this being rich business anyway."

"That explains few things, I guess," Kaiba murmured.

Soon they walked out of the school building and rather fancy looking car waiting for Kaiba near the school's entrance. Kaiba's driver even held the door open for them. After sitting down, Yugi looked at their school's front yard through the car's dark window. "Why are you going to public school anyway?" He asked. "I go to it because for me it's more comfortable than trying to enroll to some private school in my last year, but…"

"Same reason really," Kaiba shook his head. "Until about year ago, I was home schooled. After that history, this school was simply easiest to enroll to. I just had to take the last year's tests and I was in. In the other schools it would've been much more difficult."

Yugi nodded thoughtfully. "Home schooled, huh. That must've been… different."

"You can't even imagine how different," the taller teen muttered, sounding a bit bitter. "But I wont talk about that until I get home."

The shorter teen frowned. _'His home schooling as something to do with the Shatranj and the murder he more or less committed?'_ he nodded. "I can respect that," he murmured. _'This is getting more interesting by the minute. Now I'm really itching to hear his story.'_

Kaiba lived in a mansion surrounded by large, well preserved western garden. It was easy to tell that he was the richest guy in Domino just by looking at the place. The mansion had three floors and each floor had about dozen windows just at one side of the house. There was even a beautiful fountain in the front yard of the house, one with sculptures and everything.

As they got up from the car, a servant rushed to greet them. Listening to the servant's greeting, Yugi felt a bit overwhelmed. _'Is this how rich people are supposed to live? In huge mansions like this with people serving them? I think I prefer grandfather's way of living to this. It's not like I love cleaning or making laundry or making food, but I rather do it by myself than have someone else do it for me…'_

After ordering some coffee and snacks, Kaiba led Yugi into the mansion. The first room of the place was enormous three floor hall with enormous marble staircases leading up to the other floors. There were sculptures inside too, along with large and probably very expensive paintings. "Wow," Yugi mumbled unwittingly. _'Is this what they talk about when they speak of that lifestyle of rich and famous? Wow. Though I'd hate to live in place like this. It's a mansion, yes, but where's the part that's supposed to be a "home"?'_

"Come on. We'll talk in my office," Kaiba murmured and begun leading Yugi up the stairs.

_'He has his own office?'_ Yugi mused silently as he followed. Shaking the awed thought out of his head he looked at the marble staircase. It was so clean that he could see his own reflection from it. _'…I have a feeling that I should take off my shoes and carry them in my hands, but…'_ he glanced up to see Kaiba still wearing his. _'I guess not.'_

Kaiba's office was spacey, but didn't have the same feel of enormous space as the hall. It was maybe thanks to the comfortable couches and the bookshelves in the office, as well as the dark colours it had been decorated with. Soon after they had entered, a servant walked in with a tray. After leaving it to the table between the couches, she quickly left again.

"Your coffee," Kaiba motioned him to take some while taking a seat. He glanced at his golden wrist watch. "My brother should be out for another hour, I want this thing over before he comes home."

_'He has brother?'_ Yugi reached for the tray and quickly poured himself a cup. "I can deal with that. So…" he looked up. "Would you tell me why my grandfather sold that game to you and why did you use it?"

Kaiba was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head. "No, I better start at the beginning - and how I met Sugoroku. It might get confusing otherwise." He visibly relaxed against the backrest of the couch, as if forcibly driving his anxiousness away. Then he started his tale.

"Not many know it, but me and my brother were both adopted. Our mother died giving birth to my brother and our father died in car accident when I was eight. We went to orphanage after that. My brother Mokuba was only three back then, he can't remember our father at all," Kaiba said this all very quickly, as if saying it like that made it easier.

As Yugi didn't say anything to interrupt, just listened intently, Kaiba relaxed a bit again and continued. "I met Sugoroku in that orphanage. He donated some games to the orphanage - Go, Chess, Shogi boards and such… nothing that would really interest kids. However, later I found out that one of those boards was blessed. Sugoroku told me himself - the Chess board he donated was blessed so that it brought out people's innate abilities. I was more or less forced to believe it since by playing on that board I found out my genius."

_'Grandfather donated a blessed Chess board?'_ Yugi blinked with surprise. _'He must've been lot more generous the I thought. Blessed boards are not exactly rare but very valuable none the less.'_

"And I don't say it because I'm arrogant. I am a genius. My IQ is around 190. It's very… very rare for people to have that kind of intelligence. I found out that I had it by playing on that blessed Chessboard," Kaiba brushed his fingers over his eyes. "Though sometimes I wonder if it had been better if I hadn't found out. It became very quickly a widely known, my intelligence. It interested many people - who wouldn't want to adopt an genius? Just by being my parent people would became known, so…"

"I was adopted by Kaiba Gozaburo. He didn't want to adopt Mokuba along with me, but I more or less forced him - challenged him into game of Chess. If I won, he would have to adopt Mokuba too. He was sure I wouldn't be able to since he was the national Chess champion at the time, but I still won," Kaiba smiled bitterly. "And so we were adopted. At that time I was rather happy for it, too. After all, with someone like Gozaburo as our father we were bound to get a easy, happy childhood, right…?"

Kaiba fell silent for a moment. Sipping his coffee, Yugi frowned slightly. _'I guess this is more complicated than I thought. Kaiba certainly doesn't sound or act like someone who had an happy childhood.'_

"I was wrong," Kaiba murmured almost to himself. "Gozaburo had had an child of his own, Noah, but he had died just some time before Gozaburo adopted me and my brother. Noah had been an genius too, not as high level as me, but one nonetheless. That was pretty much the reason why Gozaburo adopted me, because of my intelligence. I was supposed to replace Noah…"

"But Noah had been since the beginning taught and trained as a genius. I hadn't been, my skills were no better than any other eight year old child's. I ended up disappointing Gozaburo, and he… didn't take disappointment that well," the tall teen seemed to steel himself. "What he did was as close to child abuse as it gets while still being legal. Officially I was home schooled. It felt more like training to me. For years I wasn't allowed to do anything but study. I wasn't allowed to be a child, to play… if I did badly, I wasn't even allowed to see my brother, sometimes months would go and I wouldn't see Mokuba at all."

Yugi frowned, _'I see…'_

"When I was fifteen and my brother was ten, we managed to run away for a while," Kaiba shook his head. "Which was a stupid thing to do, there was no place we could go where Gozaburo's arm wouldn't reach. But we were lucky - very lucky - that we ended up meeting with Sugoroku. He took us into his home and listened to our story… He also told us about his games and about the Chess game he had left at the orphanage, about its abilities."

"I guess the old man felt guilty for leaving that Chess set at the orphanage. Said that in return of inadvertently shaping our lives, he would give a game to us, magical came that could possibly make one wish come true. We just had to name the wish… and he would see if he had a game of that ability," the taller teen smiled bitterly. "The first thing that came to my mind was that I wanted to kill Gozaburo. I wanted the abuse to end, I wanted to… be free."

"And grandfather gave you the Shatranj," Yugi murmured.

"It was very fitting too, Shatranj being Chess's forefather…" Kaiba laughed mirthlessly. "Sugoroku of course warned me of the game and that using it would mark me forever - that I would never be the same again. I didn't care. I wanted our lives to change for the better. I was cautious but I was going to use the game and nothing was going to stop me…"

"When we were taken back to the mansion - this mansion - Mokuba hid the game for me while Gozaburo punished me. I wasn't allowed to see my brother for six months, but somehow he managed to keep the cursed game hidden," the brown haired millionaire seemed almost proud when he said it. "When we were allowed to finally meet, we planned for the perfect time to bring out the game. We decided on Gozaburo's birthday… I was going to 'give' the Shatranj to our stepfather as a birthday present. And it worked."

"We played - in honour of his birthday, I said and he bought it. Gozaburo of course played seriously because there were people there, all his associates and business partners, co-workers… all there to see our game of life and death. But he didn't play as seriously as I did - he didn't know his life was on the line." Kaiba's smile turned cold. "I won… and he died by heart attack. As the people there fussed over him, called an ambulance and all that, I managed to hide the board again. Later they joked that he died to the shock of losing as he was known for being unbeatable… I guess they were right."

"After that…" Kaiba frowned. "I could feel that the game changed me somehow. Ever since then everything has felt hard, cold and colourless somehow… I know that by getting rid of the game I can't get rid of it's effects, but still… I want it out of my house."

Yugi looked at him silently for a moment before draining the last of his coffee. _'What a story,'_ he mused to himself. _'I wonder if he knows that there is one way to get rid of effects of a curse. Grandfather probably never told him because it's extremely long shot, but there is away. If a true priest or a priestess, one selected by divine being, blesses him…'_ the shorter teen lowered his eyes. _'Yeah, a long shot. There aren't true priests around anymore. Haven't been for hundreds of years.'_

"Will you buy the game?" Kaiba asked quietly.

"I can't," Yugi shook his head and placed the empty coffee cup to the table. "The game was given to you, you didn't buy it. It's priceless now and if I buy it, there is a chance the effects of the game's curse will just get stronger in you. But… I might be able to trade for it. Game for a game."

"I think I've seen enough magical games to last me a life time," Kaiba glared at him. "I don't want another."

"Then you have to consider the possibility that you will be shackled with the Shatranj for the rest of your life, seeing that I'm one of the few who would buy such a game and never play with it," Yugi shrugged and stood up. "You know where the shop is, right? If you change your mind… bring the Shatranj there and well see if we can find something of equal worth." He smiled a little. "I'm not saying that you have to get another cursed game. Charmed or blessed one works just as well."

Kaiba frowned before turning his eyes to the table between them. "I'll have someone take you home," he then said.

"I appreciate that," Yugi smiled. "And thank you for the coffee. It was good."

xx

Heh. People caught the Hikaru no Go reference. Very good. And your guesses about the Senet were VEERY interesting. keep the theories coming, they're blast to read. Thank you very much for the comments. and my apoligies for the possible grammar errors. I'm too lazy to do a thorough check up right now, I'll do it later if the mistakes poke people to their eyes.


	7. VII Game by fate

**VII chapter**

**Game by fate**

"What is that?" she asked, staring at the book in Yugi's hands. Seeing the cover, she placed her hands to her hips with disapproving look on her face. "One of those things again. Haven't I told you that I don't want you reading that trash? Is it a library book or did you buy it?"

Yugi sighed, lowering the fantasy book he had been reading. "Mom. What am I supposed to do?" he motioned at his room. "The school is out, we don't have a TV, we have no computer, you won't allow me to play any games… and now I can't read any books either? Am I just supposed to sit here and be bored every day?"

"You could go out with your friends," she said meaningfully.

He grumbled, taking the book up again and turning his eyes back to the text. "Difficult to do when you have no friends," he muttered sullenly. Then he cried out with surprise when she grabbed the book from his hand. "Mom, I was reading that!"

"I told you, I don't want you reading rubbish like this," she said, checking if the book was a library book before tucking it under her arm. Then she looked at him seriously. "And what might be the reason you don't have any friends, hm?" She took in his outlook of leather pants, black shirt and dark hair. Folding her hands she shook her head. "That sort of clothing just sticks out and people automatically assume you're no good. You just don't mix into the crowd, you know."

"Yeah, because I don't want to mix into anything," Yugi rolled his eyes and leaned back.

"Well if you would you might not be so alone," she ran her hand through her brown hair and sighed. "Can't you just try and be like the others? If you just were a normal boy like the other boys, you might get friends!"

x

Coming out of hazy state of sleep, Yugi sighed. _'What a dream to have,'_ he thought to himself, raising his left hand to try and rub the sleepiness out of his eyes. _'Everything is possible in a dream and my mind wastes it about dreaming about the past? It's such a boring past anyway… Especially in comparison to my present. I could be dreaming about everything - like flying or being magical criminal, but no. I dream about some fight I had with mom.'_

_'Though I guess I still have issues with the things she said,'_ he closed his eyes. _'I know now she was only scared and confused and wanted me to grow up normally, but still… it's not nice to be told over and over that the way you are isn't good enough for someone's liking. Sometimes it seemed like she would look at the other boys from my school and wish that one of them could replace me. I wasn't normal enough for her. I was…'_

Looking at his left hand, he smiled a little. There were tan lines at his wrists, where he usually wore his bracelets. Working in the garden had made him get bit more sun than he usually got, and it showed. _'Good thing I didn't wear rings while working. Tan lines on fingers would be kind of weird.'_

Lowering his hand to his stomach he pursed his lips thoughtfully. _'I wonder what my classmates think of me. Here I don't have the background of a loser like back in __Tokyo__; here they don't ignore me… Do they see me as troublemaker because of the way I look? What a weird thought. My neighbours are pretty much adjusted to it by now - though around here being eccentric is nothing new. Grandfather was too, I think.'_

After moment of lying there, he begun to wonder to what he had woken up to. _'The alarm clock isn't ringing… and my hand feels weird…'_ Turning his head to right, he planned to get a view of the clock to see the time. Instead he saw something that made him freeze and stop breathing.

The man, who was supposed to be in near coma-like state back in his old bedroom, was sitting on the floor beside his bed, leaning heavily onto the bed with his head resting on the crook of his arm. The man was holding Yugi's right hand in his - hence the weird feeling - but he didn't react to Yugi's reflexive clutching in any way.

For a while Yugi was absolutely still without even daring to breath. When the man didn't move at all, he let out a quivery breath. _'Is he awake?'_ he inquired mentally, tilting his head a bit to see the man's face. Though restful and calm the man's face wasn't expressionless anymore. There was a tiny smile on his lips.

_'Okay not awake... how did he get here…?'_ Looking towards the door, Yugi frowned. _'Maybe he woke up for a moment? Grandpa theorised that this guy's life force comes more or less from me, and the guy can feel it… so it sort of makes sense that the first thing he would do was to find me… Kinda creepy, but I can handle that.'_ Turning his eyes back to the man, he sighed. _'He woke up, but he isn't awake anymore. Question is, is he in that magical coma thing again, or is he just asleep…'_

Carefully he reached to touch the man's throat. Finding the pulse was easy enough - after doing it countless of times while keeping track of the man's heart rate, he had almost memorised the man's throat. Turning to look at the alarm clock, he waited for the beat before counting. _'Woah. Six beats per minute. Last time it was two. He's getting more, uh… less comatose? He's improving faster, though. It wasn't that long ago since the last time his heart rate sped up.'_

Slowly sitting up in his bed and freeing his hand from the man's hold, Yugi stretched and looked at the man thoughtfully. _'Did something change to make him wake up quicker? It took a long while for his heart rate go from three beats per two minutes to two beats per one minute… and now he's already at six beats per one minute. What changed?'_

After a moment it hit him. _'I started spending more time around him! Every time I read the records, I do it in his room. That makes sense. Since my life force is his as well, the closer I am to him… the more of it he gets? Or easier… Anyway, he's more energized when I'm around.'_ Turning his eyes to the man, he frowned. _'I guess sleeping in same room would help this guy… but I'm not sharing my bed. No, I'll drag the other bed from my old room to this room… yeah, that should work...'_

Sitting up, he quickly walked out of his room and into his old room. At the doorway, he stopped to stare the bed. By the looks of it, upon waking the comatose man hadn't been alert enough to push the duvet aside - or he just hadn't realised that he could. Now it lay on the floor in messy way that made Yugi wonder if the man had stumbled on it.

_'Could be…'_ he thought with little bit of worry, _'that he didn't stumble at all. It might be that he couldn't even stand - he could've just crawled… Grandpa did write that he wasn't all that good at walking in the beginning - kept stumbling a lot at the end too. Poor guy.' _He shook his head._ 'Oh well. Time to get to work.'_

By the time he had dragged the old bed to his new room, the alarm clock begun ringing, marking the moment when he usually would wake up. After shutting it, he rearranged the beddings of the old bed. Then he turned to the man, who was still half sitting on the floor and half laying on his bed. _'I know from experience that he's too heavy for me to actually lift up - back when I needed to change the beddings of his bed it took me quarter of a hour just to get him out of the bed… but this time I have new tricks with me…_'

Kneeling beside the man, he held his hands up and concentrated. _'Doesn't have to be too complicated, just enough to defy gravity a little bit…'_ he thought and frowned. Creating a bubble of protective magic was surprisingly easier like this, when he was creating it around a living being. In a strange way, he could feel not only the magic but the man as well - something he hadn't been able to with the water glasses or the milk. When he was able to sense the target, situating a shield around it was much simpler.

_'Better not to take chances; if I just levitate this guy I might drop and injure him,'_ he thought once the shield was in place. Wiggling his arms underneath the man's knees and around his back, he carefully stood up, taking the man with him. _'Light as a feather,'_ he chuckled while turning to the extra bed. _'This shield magic stuff is really amazing at times.'_

After the man was safely on the bed, Yugi pulled the covers over him again. After checking that everything was alright, he turned and made his own bed. _'Boy, that could've scared me a big time if I wasn't adjusted to weird things. Like that Senet which still keeps on hammering its magic all around. I've had it about week now, so I've gotten pretty much used to it. At least now I can sleep even though it's still going at it.'_

He yawned, rubbing his eyes as he headed out of his room. _'Alright. Now I want some breakfast before I get ready for school…'_ After visiting the bathroom and briefly freshening up, he headed to the kitchen to make himself something to eat. _'Still haven't gotten that coffee maker, though. I should buy it already,'_ he mused while waiting for the toast. _'Though I don't usually have trouble staying awake in mornings. It's just when I haven't slept well in the night. That probably applies to lot of people…'_

Once the toast was ready, he sat down to the kitchen table to eat it. _'Heh. I have a rather fancy dining room and I've never really used. This tiny kitchen table is enough since it's just me. Oh well, this way the dining room at least stays clean…'_ biting into the toast, he looked lazily out of the window. _'Kaiba probably has a dining room too - probably one lot bigger than mine too. I wonder if he ever eats there since it's only he and his brother that make their family…'_

It has been some days since his visit to the three floor mansion owned by Kaiba. Since then the tall teen had been pretty much avoiding him at school, but then again, Kaiba did that always. _'There's one person who really wants no attachments to anyone. I wonder if he avoids his brother too… Though I'm getting a bit impatient. He should just make up his mind and trade with me. He can't be so scared of magic that he would willingly keep a death game in his presence just because he doesn't want another one. Who knows, he just might get something really good in the trade.'_

While eating, he made quick list of the games which were possibly of the same level as the Shatranj. Sadly, it wasn't very many games. '_There's that one Royal Game of __Ur__. It was blessed with good luck - and that sort of things are actually lot rarer than people know. Luck isn't easy to contain, fickle thing as it is. It takes quite a priest or a magician to command it,'_ Yugi mused. '_Though there's the Pachisi board too. The charm in that board is work of art. Oh, and the Mancala board, though I doubt Kaiba would be interested in board that enhances fertility and fruitfulness.'_ He chuckled. _'That would be a good board for a farmer, though.'_

_'If I could add the possessed boards, then the Goban and the Senet would be around the Shatranj's level too, but...'_ He shook his head, reaching for another slice of toast. _'Those things can't be given to just anyone. There are selected people for them and only those people can trade or buy them…'_

After eating and tidying the kitchen, Yugi headed back to his room to change. It was slightly creepy to do it when there was someone there - even if that someone wasn't exactly alert - but he managed to do it. Then, after checking his backpack to see that he had everything, he bid his farewell to the comatose guy before heading out.

_'I have plenty of time to get to the bus stop…'_ he mused as he stepped out of the shop's backdoor. After locking it, he checked to see how the koi were doing. They were still a bit slow after the somewhat colder night, but that didn't stop them eating about everything they could find from the bottom of the pond. Yugi threw them some fish food before leaving the pond behind. _'When the autumn comes I'll need to stop the feeding,'_ he thought, looking back to what his neighbours had taught to him. _'Something about the fish getting less active when it gets a bit colder…'_

"Morning, you brat!" Yugi's next door neighbour called to him as he stepped through the gate. It was the same man he had met in his very first day in the neighbourhood - and about the only other resident in the area who, like Yugi, wasn't part of the gossip circle. Yomaigoto was the man's last name and Yugi still didn't know his given name.

"Morning, grumpy," Yugi answered to the annoyed looking old man. "Awake early, huh?"

"Have to be. The damn hospital people called me for some stupid check up again," Yomaigoto grumbled. "I have to go down there to tell them that I'm healthy as I can be."

Yugi looked the old man from head to toe. "That can't be much," he couldn't help but commenting, much to the old man's chagrining. Chuckling softly, Yugi shrugged his shoulders to get his backpack settle more comfortably. "Just a check up, huh?"

"Yeah. Third one this year," the old man looked around suspiciously and the leaned in a bit. "I'm starting to think that they _want_ something to be wrong with me. Either that or they're trying to get my money. Not that it's a new thing, everyone been trying to get my money ever since I made my first penny, but hospital people are usually supposed to be all honourable and stuff. These check ups are pretty damn expensive, though."

Yugi couldn't help but chuckle. Of all the people in his neighbourhood, he honestly liked Yomaigoto the best. He reminded Yugi of the landlord he and his mother had had back in Tokyo - grumpy old woman by the name of Subeta, who had also been Yugi's babysitter when he had been too young to be left alone. Also the fact that Yomaigoto didn't gossip was a very attractive quality about him.

"Well, I gotta run," Yugi said to the old man. "Don't let the hospital people get to you. They're just waiting for you to drop your guard anyway."

"Oh trust me boy, I'll be keeping a sharp eye around them," Yomaigoto nodded with a narrowed eyes. Yugi laughed, waving at him before heading towards the bus stop.

x

That day school was no different from the previous days. Some people talked to him, asked his opinions even laughed at his nervous wittiness. Kaiba ignored him, but that was nothing new. After a very boring math class, the school ended and Yugi, along with everyone else, fetched his shoes and headed out.

_'In comparison my home life, school life is boring,'_ he mused with a stretch as he stepped out of the school building. _'Though in what world could math ever compare with magic? Especially since the thing I've been learning lately is invisibility. What could possibly top the ability to turn invisible?'_ he chuckled a little at his thoughts before frowning. _'Though_… _That invisibility thing is bit more difficult than the things I've done so far. Hardness is easy since it only relies on will power and the shape only requires some concentration, but invisibility… that relies on imagination. And I thought I had a good imagination. I guess I've just never imagined things invisible before…'_

_ 'Although, now that I think about it… Wanting to turn invisible is pretty much the same thing as wishing that the ground could just swallow you up, hm? I'm very familiar with that sort of wishing. Though wishing and imagining are two different things, I think,'_ scratching his cheek idly, he looked around in the school yard. _'And magic isn't wish-work. Concentration and determination make magic, not idle wishes. So… concentrating onto wishing that something could turn invisible?'_ he couldn't help but chuckle. _'Nah. I'm getting further and further from imagination. Heh. Concentration, determination and imagination. Lots of nations in magic…'_

His thoughts trailed away as he saw a small commotion taking place not too far away from him. Some girls from his class were gathered around something on the ground, cooing softly and making the sort of noises girls usually made at cute things. "Hmm?" he hummed and curiously took few steps forward.

"…so dirty," one of the girls was murmuring. "It's still so cute," another answered while third muttered something about ball of fluff. Leaning to see around them, Yugi blinked with surprise. It was a kitten. Very dirty one with long fur and rather big head.

"Poor thing, must be homeless," one of the girls crouched to the ground beside the dirty little animal. Frightened, the kitten stumbled back a bit, falling clumsily to it's side. The girl looked up. "Someone should take it home. It's probably starved." None of the girls could. One of them had a dog, another had a little brother was allergic and third said that her parents didn't want animals, and so on. Disappointedly they begun to wonder if Domino had animal shelter.

Yugi frowned a bit as the kitten mewed pitifully, looking around with confusion and fright. _'Its… adorable,'_ he thought almost against his will. _'Mom never let me have an animal. I always wanted one, even a little one… I thought that if I had a cat or something, I would feel less alone. Cats are affectionate creatures aren't they…?'_ he looked away with troubled expression. _'Taking a cat now would probably be fatal for the koi, but…'_ he almost unwillingly turned his eyes back to the brown little cat. _'But… that thing is so small! It'll take a while for it to get big enough to even try…'_

_'It is pretty lonely living in that big house alone. Well, there's the comatose guy and the spirits in the haunted games, but, uh…'_ he grimaced. _'They're not exactly good company. I certainly have enough space to take the kitten - besides, I've taking notice that there are lot of mice around the place… having a cat would maybe keep them away from the house and the games'_

He sighed as the girls kept on wondering where they could take the cat. "I'll take it," he finally spoke aloud.

"Mutou? You?" one of the girls from Yugi's class asked, looking him from top to toe. "I didn't think you were cat person."

_'Nah, I'm a magic person and a spirit person. Oh, and a game person,'_ Yugi shrugged crouched beside the cat. It smelled horrible and looked even worse. Taking it to his hands, he grimaced at the feel of the dirty knotted fur. The kitten mewled with surprise and struggled a bit. _'Ugh… where has this thing been…? Oh poor beast, all skin and bones. Or fur and bones actually. Dirty fur and bones.'_ He held the kitten up and examined it to see it's gender. It was a boy cat. "I already have some fish. Having a cat around would make life more interesting," he mused. _'Though I'm not sure if I need any more excitement to my life. And yeah, this guy really needs a bath.'_

The girls looked at him with sort of quirky respect - like they didn't know what to make of is words but appreciated him taking the cat. Or they were just awed that he was actually willing to touch the dirty thing. "Won't your parents mind?" one of the girls asked.

"They're not exactly in position to do so," Yugi mused. He petted the dirty fur gently to try and calm the little guy down. It took few pets but it finally stopped struggling - though it may have been because it was so tired. With a slight smile, Yugi stood up. "I've never had a cat, though. Does anyone know how to care for them?"

He was immediately given a lecture on proper cat-care. After memorising few bits of it - like cat litter, food and the fact that cats did not drink milk thorough their lives - he headed towards the bus stop. The driver wasn't all that happy about letting him in with the dirty kitten, but when Yugi paid extra for the cat he was allowed.

_'I should have something for this cat to eat - I think I bought some tuna last week…'_ he mused after he had gotten out of the bus. _'I'll let the cat eat and after that I'll wash it. Then I'll visit the grocery store to buy some proper cat food and that litter stuff… yeah. The girls warned me that as a wild cat this guy probably doesn't know how to use a litter box, so I gotta teach him…'_

It was a good plan except for the fact that after eating some tuna, the cat fell asleep right beside the dish. _'He stinks, but oh well… I'll visit the store now and let the little guy sleep. I'll wash him after I come back.'_

Again a good plan that was disrupted. When he returned from the store, there was a black car waiting in the driveway. Recognising it as Kaiba's car, Yugi quickly hurried forward. As he did, the door was opened and Kaiba stepped out. "Mutou," the taller teen greeted him.

"Kaiba," Yugi smiled. '_Okay, this is proving to be an interesting day. First the comatose guy wakes up - and I really need to figure a better name for him. Then I take a dirty kitten home. And now Kaiba's here, and if I'm lucky I know why he came.'_ "Interested in getting a new game, then?"

He was given a flat look. "Something like that," Kaiba grind out from between his teeth and motioned the house. He was holding a metallic suitcase and though Yugi couldn't feel the game inside, he felt the suitcase. It was ridden with protective magic, clearly designed to hold something very dangerous inside. "Could we go inside?" Kaiba asked

"Of course, of course," the shorter teen nodded and led the other one into his yard and to the house. Once inside Kaiba looked around with mildly surprised look about his face. "I haven't changed anything since I came here," Yugi shrugged. "Didn't feel the need."

"Hm," Kaiba nodded, loosing interest. then he looked at Yugi sharply. "Can we get this done and over with?"

"Yes, yes," Yugi walked to the counted, setting his groceries aside. "Show me the game," he said, patting the counter. When Kaiba gave him a suspicious look, he rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to take it without seeing it before. Besides, all the games are rendered in a way powerless here. You can't play games inside the first floor."

"Really?" Kaiba looked surprised as he set the case down to the counter.

"Yeah, really. There are many potentially dangerous and wilful games here. If they would be allowed to be by themselves and do whatever they want to do… well, it's better that they aren't," Yugi smiled tightly. Some of the games in the shop were so strict that if a breeze tipped over a game piece, they considered it a move. And once you made a first move, you had to finish the game.

The taller teen just nodded with little bit of relief in his face. Yugi watched with slight curiosity - and awe - as Kaiba took out a key and opened the two locks holding the metal suitcase shut. _'Obviously designed to hold a very dangerous game,'_ Yugi mused as the protective shield surrounding the case broke open. Then he was forced to step a half step back at the feel of sheer _evil_ coming out of the case.

"Yeah, that's a powerful game," he murmured more to himself than to Kaiba while turning the suitcase around to see the game. Though Shatranj was the forefather of Chess, there were differences. The board wasn't a checkerboard, for example. The pieces weren't exactly the same as in Chess - they weren't slender like Chess pieces, but somewhat bulky and it was hard to tell what they were supposed to look like. But the resemblance was still striking. Especially in this set where the pieces were made of bone and ebony.

"Which side did you play, if you don't mind me asking?" Yugi asked while examining the board with his eyes.

"Black," Kaiba grimaced. "And I'd rather not talk about it anymore. I already told what happened."

"Yes, yes, I was merely curious. Did my grandfather give you this case?" the magician touched the inner side of the case carefully. It was lined with black leather where all sorts of symbols from all sorts of places and languages were burned. Yugi hadn't yet delved into the area of using such symbols in magic, but the case was hard evidence of how useful they were.

"He did." Kaiba nodded.

"Then it comes with the game," Yugi nodded cheerfully, closing the case and locking it again. _'Thank god. I don't think any normal wrapping will be enough to block this game's energy. And I don't think the protections in the first floor would hold this thing for long.'_ Looking up he smiled. "Now then… let's look for replacement. Come on."

Kaiba gave a suffered sigh, but followed him to the backroom. The way he looked at the shelves indicated that he had been in the room before. Sugoroku had probably shown it to him when he had given the Shatranj… well, it didn't matter. Placing the suitcase temporarily to the floor - he would find a proper place for it later - Yugi looked around. _'Now, which game is the most - what's that?'_

He felt humming - one of the games in the storage was humming. Yugi's eyebrows shot up as he concentrated to the feeling. It was resonating… with Kaiba. "Ah," Yugi smirked at Kaiba who gave him a weird look. "One game here is destined to go with you. Can you feel that? It's singing to you."

"Singing…?" the taller teen looked at him like he had lost it.

"Yeah. You should feel it. This humming, almost purring sensation," Yugi hummed along with the rhythm of the resonance. "It feels almost happy. One game here is quite pleased to see you." Then he frowned. _'Though, if one game here is destined to go with Kaiba… why didn't my grandfather give the game to him two years ago? Grandfather was better at this stuff than I am, he should've been able to feel that easily. Unless…'_

With anticipation mixed with trepidation, Yugi followed the hum. It was the Senet he had bought from Shiagari. _'Well, I'll be damned. The first game I bought already will be sold. Or traded for. No way is this coincidence,'_ Yugi took the long board gently to his hands and turned to Kaiba. The board felt warm in his hands, pulsing with contented energy. _'This is pretty amazing, though… having a proof of fate.'_

"This here is your game," Yugi spoke, stepping forward. "It's called Senet. It's an ancient Egyptian game from around three thousand years ago."

Kaiba frowned. "And what sort of witchcraft is in that game?"

"You shouldn't speak of it like that, you might end up hurting the game's feelings," Yugi frowned, and held the game up for Kaiba to see properly. "This is an haunted game. It has spirit inside it."

"No way in hell am I going to take a haunted game," Kaiba took a step back. "I got my share of black magic with that goddamn Shatranj -"

"Who ever spoke of black magic?" Yugi asked with confusion. "Haunted games are the rarest and purest of games. It takes divinity to haunt a game, especially one as old as this and divinity doesn't help just anyone." He held the game out for Kaiba to take. "You will find that you won't be able to leave this shop without this game, Kaiba. It's your destiny to take it with you and greater men have fought and lost to destiny."

"Destiny my ass -"

"There are no coincidences in this world," Yugi said sternly. "It was fate that made my grandfather donate the blessed game to your orphanage. It was fate that led that game to reveal your intelligence as it is. It was fate that led my grandfather to you when you and your brother ran away from your adopted father. It was fate that made him give the Shatranj to you - and it's fate that brings you here now."

The magician frowned. "You will take this game. If not for the game's sake, then for yours. The spirit has been waiting for you and you alone for thousands of years - and we're talking about spirit strong enough to stand that long. I wonder what the spirit would do should you leave the game behind."

"Spirits can curse, huh?" Kaiba grimaced.

"No, but I've read that they are good at haunting and possessing things… and people," Yugi smiled cheerfully while placing the game board into Kaiba's hands. "Be kind to the spirit and the spirit will no doubt be kind to you. Be cruel to him and this trade will nullify - and you will be forced to take the Shatranj back. How does that sound?"

"Like weird way of blackmailing people," Kaiba murmured, looking at the board. "It's… warm."

"It likes you," Yugi shrugged. "Some games are like that."

"How do you play with it?" the taller teen then asked.

"You don't play with haunted boards, not without the spirit's approval," Yugi shook his head. "The board is the sanctuary and the gravestone of the spirit possessing it. Using them for playing could anger the spirit, so I advice against it. No, you should just keep it around you. That should be enough." _'Enough until the time the spirit will leave the board anyway.'_

"That doesn't sound too complicated," Kaiba mused, his long fingers clasping around the board determinately. Then he met Yugi's eyes with annoyed look. "Are we done here?"

"Yeah," Yugi nodded with a smile.

"Then I'll take my leave," Kaiba quickly turned around. "And hope to god I don't have to come back here."

Yugi chuckled and watched him go. _'He'll be back. If not earlier, then by the time he will start seeing things no one else sees… Yeah, he'll be back,'_ he mused as he turned to the Shatranj's metal case. _'Now, I need to find a place to hide you and then I have a kitten to wash…'_

xx

There ya go. Mysterious comatose man woke up and Shatranj and Senet were traded. A bit predictable, but who cares. And yay for teh kitten. This chapter was rushedly written T.T

My apologies for possible typos and grammar errors and thank you for the awesum comments.


	8. VIII Game of hide and seek

**VIII chapter**

**Game of hide and seek**

The alarm clock blasted to ringing, starting Yugi out of last of his sleep. Groaning with mild annoyance, he reluctantly reached for it to shut it off. Part of him contemplated on staying in bed and skipping school. So far he had had perfect record of never skipping school in Domino, though. He saw no real reason to break it.

With a tired chuckle, he turned to look at his side where, in the other end of the room, the comatose man still slept. "You're lucky, you know. I wish I could sleep in every day… Hey, kitty, how did you get up there?" he asked, noticing the brown kitten he had acquired not that long ago. The brown kitten was sitting curled on the comatose man's chest, and by the looks of it he was perfectly content. The kitten paid no attention to him, merely curled tighter and continued sleeping. "Two sleepyheads, huh?" Yugi chuckled. "Man, do I have some lousy housemates."

He yawned and started getting up. "Well, someone got to be somewhat responsible around here, I guess," he grumbled, stretching and walking to open the curtain's. The sunlight blinded him for a moment, before he got adjusted to it. "It's pretty day out there and you two are missing it completely," he snorted, glancing at the two said sleepyheads. The kitty opened one eye and made and confused mewl. With a chuckle, Yugi walked over to pet it. "Try not to shed on our comatose friend, though. He's having hard time waking up as it is. I think he wouldn't like to wake up covered in cat hairs."

The kitten closed it's eyes sleepily and purred. Then it inhaled sharply and sneezed. Yugi stared at it for a moment as it licked it's nose. Then the teen bursted to laughter. "_Iboh_?! That's the weirdest sneeze I've ever heard! Purr…. Iboh!" The kitty gave him a disgruntled look. With a grin he scratched it behind its ears. "Don't be like that, little guy. That was the funniest sneeze ever, it's not a bad thing. Iboh, heh. Maybe I should name you Iboh? No? How about Puriboh? Kuriboh?" The kitten sneezed again. Yugi laughed. "Kuriboh it is!"

Newly named Kuriboh gave him a sour look before turning it's back to Yugi, and going to sleep again. Chuckling, he stroked it's fur one last time before getting up again. "Sleep away you sleepyheads. I'm getting something to eat." While getting the said food, he couldn't help but wonder. _'I'm getting pretty casual about this whole comatose guy thing. And I still haven't gotten a name for him… ooh, what's that?'_

He leaned in to look out of the window that was right next t the kitchen counter. _'Is that a postman? Actually leaving something to my box?'_ he blinked with surprise. _'I've lived for, what, month, month and half here, and I finally got some mail?! Should I mark this day to the calendar or something?'_

But then again, why would he get any mail? There was no one to send him letters and his bills were automatically paid from his account - which was nice since he hated paying bills. Not that he had that many bills to pay, just his phone bill - which was nonexistent - and for the water and electricity he used in the house. And since he didn't waste water and the house had almost no electrical appliances whatsoever, those bills were pretty light.

_'Might be just an advertisement or something - though it shouldn't be. I told the post office to make sure I wouldn't be bothered with those when I changed my address…'_ Yugi frowned, watching the postman continue making his way across the street. _'Aw, damn it, now I'm curious to see what I got.'_

With a sigh he left his food preparation behind and headed downstairs and outside. Back in Tokyo he might've worried about going out in his pyjamas, but not here. He doubted any of his neighbours would mind - Yomaigoto hung around in his night clothing all the time.

Skipping over the yard barefooted was an experience Yugi decided to repeat one day. With a hum, he reached for the mailbox and pulled out what ever there was inside. Three letters. _'Wow. Three. And these are letters, not advertisements… are these really for me,'_ he frowned slightly as he flipped them around to see the addresses. They were written in English - and addressed to Yugi Mutou. _'Okay, they are for me, but… who would send these to me? And write the address in English of all languages?'_

Confused, he headed back inside. Once he was back in his kitchen, he used nearest knife to open the letters. They were all written in English. _'Thank gods my English is decent… now let's see…'_

The first letter that he opened had came from a man called Arthur Hopkins, American who apparently had been an Archaeologist and one of his grandfather's suppliers. These days the man lived a lazy life, according to his letter, but he had some interesting games he would've liked to sell - and buy - if the Game Shop would ever be open for business.

The second letter game from Egypt, from someone named Ishizu Ishtal - one of his grandfather's business associates. Her letter was more formal than Hopkins' letter, introducing herself and telling of the business relationship her family and Sugoroku had had. She finished the letter with wishes of further trade between the Ishtal and the Mutou families.

And the final letter also came from America, this one from man named Pegasus Crawford. According to his letter, the man had heard of the Game Shop and was interested to know if they had some specific game he had been looking for apparently years.

The letters left Yugi confused and numb. The game shop wasn't open for business - sure, he had bought a game and then traded it for another, but… he had been working as a private collector rather than as a sales person. As a Game Keeper he was supposed to be, rather than shop keeper. How had these people found out that he had up taken his grandfather's house and duties anyway?

_'Only people who really know about this shop, what it really deals with and that I'm here now are Kaiba… and Bakura Shiagari. I doubt Kaiba, after his dealings here, would spread the word of me so it's Shiagari…'_ Brushing his fingers through his hair, Yugi frowned. _'If I got this business right, the people who dealt in the shop all pretty much know each other. There aren't many people in this world who deal with magical games, after all… So if these three know, it probably won't take long for everyone else to know too.'_

Leaving the letters to the table, he returned to the counter and continued preparing his breakfast. _'Will they all be sending letters, will they all have something they want to sell or buy?'_ he tried to concentrate onto the preparation, but ended up continuing thinking. _'Do I really have to open the game shop already? Wait, what do I mean, already? I wasn't sure if I was going to open it or not… right?'_

He sighed and glanced at the letters. _'I'm not going to think about this now,'_ he decided. _'I have school to go to and everything… I'll think about this when I get back home. Yeah. And now I shall prepare my food. And cook it. And eat it. Yep. Magic stuff shall wait until later.'_

He stopped before smiling a little. _'Well, most magic stuff. There's one magic related thing I won't let wait,'_ his smile turned into a grin as he raised the kitchen knife in his hand. With little bit of concentration, he coated the knife with magic - and then turned it invisible by imagining it so. He could still feel the knife in his hand, but he couldn't see or even sense it. _'This seems like excellent spot to cackle manically,'_ he chuckled while shaking the invincibility off the knife. _'Well, in any case, I have my ultimate eavesdropping technique mastered. And I'll be damned before I let such difficult skill go to waste…'_

x

Trying to wade through crowd of students was interesting thing to do when one had to do it without touching anyone. _'This is almost like some weird form of dancing,'_ Yugi mused to himself while quickly parrying a sharp movement of one of the second years. _'This is amazing, though. They really can't see me.'_ He had to stifle a chuckle - and then quickly avoid another movement from another student. _'I feel like ninja or something.'_

Finally he came to the door of his class. Slipping inside he looked around to see who would be the perfect one to eavesdrop. _'I'm a horrible person for doing this, but what else would someone do with this sort of ability? Well, other than performing highly criminal acts.'_ His eyes paused on Mazaki's group who were quietly speaking amongst them selves. _'Heh, excellent. If I'm lucky they're talking about me and I'll get to know what they really think of me…'_

"…today?" Jonouchi was asking quietly from Bakura as Yugi situated himself within hearing distance - whilst being in spot where he wouldn't be in anyone's way.

"Yeah," the white haired teen nodded. "He spend the entire yesterday backing. The flight's going to leave around noon." He sighed and got a worried frown. "And dad still won't tell me where he got the funds for it. Not that I can't guess it myself, though…"

_'Oh, they're talking about Shiagari? He's going for expedition? Good for him,'_ Yugi nodded with mild satisfaction. _'I guess I did a good thing, buying that Senet. And the Senet has gotten it's real owner too… yeah, that was some excellent dealing.'_

"What do you mean?" Mazaki asked confusedly.

"Well… I think he sold something to Mutou," Bakura leaned closer. "When I first told him about Mutou he got real excited, wanted Mutou's phone number and everything. When I asked Mutou, he said that dad probably knew his grandfather - who was a collector or something. Mutou took dad's phone number himself and I think he gave dad a call later that day. I don't know that they talked about, dad went to the balcony to talk, but… After talking, dad took some sort of box with him and left. And when he returned, he was really happy - and he didn't have the box anymore…"

"So, he sold Mutou something?" Jonouchi shrugged. "Nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Well, maybe not, but…" Bakura's frown deepened. "I think he sold something he found from his last expedition two years ago - that's when he got the box you see. And archaeologists can't take the things they find with them. Its against the law."

"You think your dad sold stolen goods to Mutou?" Honda asked with surprise. "And Mutou actually bought it?"

The white haired teen nodded. "Paid lot for it too if I read dad right - he was _really_ happy," Bakura shook his head. "And he's going to go working already, so…"

"Mutou has some dealings with Kaiba too," Jonouchi murmured. "It's pretty obvious from the way they greeted each other that first day. Wasn't there a rumour that Kaiba killed his dad to get the company and the money?"

"Kaiba Gozaburo died in a heart attack, Jonouchi," Honda rolled his eyes. "It was death by natural causes, not a murder."

"Well, you can't ignore the possibility. Gozaburo's death made Kaiba Seto very rich," Jonouchi huffed. "Rich people like he probably have access to all sort of funky things like poisons and such… who knows if Kaiba didn't use something like that. He could've."

Mazaki hummed thoughtfully, before looking at the boys. "Mutou seems a bit strange, though. He's a nice guy, despite how he looks he hasn't caused any trouble yet… But there's something in him, something's off. He's not like we are."

"We don't wear dog collars around our necks," Honda nodded, glancing at Jonouchi. "Though maybe some of us should."

"Shut it," Jonouchi almost absently kicked the brown haired teen's chair. "You think he's rich? He hasn't really said so or anything, but… dealing with Kaiba and buying that thing from Bakura's dad, not something just anyone can do, you know?"

"Might be something he inherited from his grandfather, since Kaiba and dad both mentioned that - Mutou did too," Bakura nodded. "Maybe his grandfather was wealthy. Some collectors are."

"But how did he get that wealth?" Jonouchi asked with a suspicious look about his face. "Maybe with some illegal dealings. Could've been dealer of stolen goods or something…"

Yugi brushed his fingers over his lips as they stretched into a smile. Someone would've found such discussion insulting, but he was somewhat amused for some reason. _'They're a bit off, but not by much,'_ he though to himself while straightening his back and stretching. _'Some of those games really are illegally acquired. And Shiagari probably did steal the Senet. But… these aren't actually goods made of silver and gold. Some of these games wouldn't be even taken into museums because of their worn state.'_

He headed out of the classroom to find a place where he could safely shed the shield. _'Besides, those games are safer in my hands. I can't even imagine the horror if someone would put that Shatranj into a museum for example. And the haunted boards… in my shop they have at least some possibility of ending up in right hands.'_

Yugi made his way to the nearest bathroom, and after checking that it was empty, he shed the shield. It was interesting watching himself turn visible in the bathroom mirror's reflection. _'Though I need to do something about their suspicions. If they run with their little theories they might actually cause some trouble… though what should I do…?'_ he looked up as the bell rang, calling the students to their classes. _'Time for the criminal mastermind to make his appearance, I guess,'_ he mused, chuckling as he headed back towards the classroom.

_'Though, they sort of have a point,'_ Yugi mused while entering the classroom and finding his seat. _'One reason NOT to open the shop again is the fact that the whole thing is a bit illegal. But… there is a reason why it worked. Magic works beyond all laws,'_ he frowned. _'When I look at this all from the standpoint of a magician… I was put to the shop by fate. I was born to the lineage of Mutou for a reason - the comatose guy appeared for a reason. Heck, I probably even took Kuriboh in for a reason! And that reason won't follow any rules set down by man.'_

_'As long as fate wants me in that shop… I cannot be put under scrutiny. Fate won't allow it…'_ he stopped his line of thought and shivered. _'For some reason that's a terrifying thought.'_

He drummed his desk with his fingers while the teacher walked into the classroom. _'Maybe I should open the shop and give it a try. If it doesn't work out, I can just close it again…'_

Mazaki, Jonouchi, Honda and Bakura didn't really speak to him all that much that day, but they did keep giving him strange looks. Yugi was good at ignoring such looks, so he could go about his school day normally even though he knew of their suspicions. It wasn't like they were his friends, so it was easy to shrug their suspicions off. _'One needs emotional attachment to feel insult, after all,'_ he mused. _'And so far my emotional attachments are pretty… limited.'_

It made him wonder if he was attached to anything. Before his only attachments had been to his mother and even they had been crumbling towards the end. Typical fights between teenager and his mother, but it was enough to make him bear her death without tears. But his attachments now? _'The Game Shop and the duties involved… the records, the magic, the man…'_ Yugi smiled. _'Exciting but little sad. My human relationships are all acquaintances. No family, no friends. Well, now I have a cat, at least. Though that might be just proof of how sad my life is.'_ He snorted. _'Oh well. It's not like I'm unhappy like this.'_ He looked around before starting to get up. _'And now it's time to get home, I guess.'_

"Hey, Mutou?" someone asked, stopping him before he could head to the door. It was Bakura Ryou. "What did my dad sell to you? You did buy something from him, didn't you?"

Yugi blinked with surprise. _'He's actually confronting me about this? Surprising.'_ He shrugged. "It was a board game."

The answer clearly wasn't what Bakura had been expecting. "A… board game?" he repeated. "That's it? It must've been a pretty nice game then."

"Well, it depends. It was in really bad shape, but for me it was priceless," Yugi answered with an easy smile. _'Well, I bought it for a price but I made it priceless by trading it to another priceless game'. _He shrugged again. "It's a family hobby, collecting games. Heck, I was even named after them."

"I see…" Bakura nodded and smiled. "Thanks," he then said and turned away. Yugi looked after him and chuckled. _'I have a feeling Bakura wasn't too satisfied with that answer… oh well, not my problem. And now I'll go home and see if Kuriboh has been a good little kitty.'_

He stopped. _'Or, actually… I need to find out how I need to proceed with the shop. Should I ask Kaiba? Uh, he probably won't want anything to do with me for a while. Hmm… my neighbours might know. Many of them have businesses of their own, so… yeah. I'll ask them. Yomaigoto has a company too, if I remember correctly. Heh. Grumpy Incorporated.'_

x

"You know, this really makes me appreciate my neighbours more," Yugi chatted to the comatose man while carefully cleaning the man's face with wet cloth. Like all unmoving things, the man too was occasionally covered in thin layer of dust, which Yugi needed to clean away. This time, the man had some cat hairs on him too. "They know all sort of things about keeping business. Yomaigoto especially. He's owner of a transporting company and partially owns some restaurant downtown, so he knows a lot."

With a smile, Yugi placed the wet cloth aside and brushed aside the man's slightly damp bangs. "I got your hair wet. I'm sorry. I'll check your pulse again and then I'll fetch a brush and brush your hair. Alright?" he reached for his phone and quickly searched the stopwatch function. "Alright," he murmured and reached for the man's neck. "Let's see -" he stopped with surprise. Frowning, he pushed his fingers tighter against the man's skin to feel the beat better. "It's… faster," he murmured and quickly begun timing the beats.

"Twenty. Twenty beats per minute," Yugi spoke out loud before smiling happily. "Alright! Normal for man of your age should be around seventy… if you keep this up you'll be up and about in no time." He stood up, taking the wet cloth with him. "I'll get the brush."

Dodging Kuriboh, who was plying with a ball of yarn on the floor, Yugi took the cloth to the bathroom and got the brush. Then he returned to his room to brush the man's hair. As the man never really moved, his hair never got tangled, but that day Kuriboh had apparently played around with it. "Maybe I should close the door to this room when I'm not here to keep an eye out on that little guy," Yugi mused, carefully sitting the man up so that he could freely brush the messy spiky hair. "You know it's odd that your hair doesn't grow. Your nails don't grow either."

He carefully eased the brush through tangles Kuriboh had managed to make. "But to return to the original subject… it's nice to have knowledgeable neighbours. Yomaigoto and others promised to help me with the shop. It's amusing that though I deal with near illegal - and illogical - things, the Game Shop was completely legal and respectable."

"Soon you'll have a owner of a collector store looking after you," Yugi chuckled before frowning. "Oh, I need to answer to those letters too… that Ishtal woman and the two Americans… oh, I need to check if I have that game the Pegasus guy wants. It sounded familiar so I might have it…"

After untangling the hair completely, Yugi carefully laid the unresponsive man back down. "Isn't that better?" he asked with a smile, before turning to look at Kuriboh as the kitten tumbled into the room. Picking the brown kitty from the floor, Yugi chuckled. "This room is going to be off-limits for you from now on, Kuriboh," he said while standing up. Leaving the brush to the table, he left the room, taking the kitten with him. "Let's go and see what game was it that Pegasus Crawford wanted, hm?"

At kitchen, Yugi chuckled at himself. "I've been talking to myself a lot these days," he mused while reaching for the letters. "Now lets see what was the game…" he read through the letter and frowned. "One of those troublesome games, huh…?"

Leaving the letter behind he headed towards the stairs leading downstairs and then quickly went through the storage room. There, in corner, there was a cardboard box with one name written in many languages. _'Yami no Sekai. Shadow Realm…,'_ Yugi frowned at the box while carefully opening it with his free hand while balancing Kuriboh with the other. His efforts revealed something wrapped in the wrapping which blocked magical energies. _'Game which must be finished. Game which will unleash whole another world. Why would that American want this game…? It's almost as deadly as the Shatranj. Might be the second most dangerous game in the shop…'_ His frown darkened. _'If that American thinks that he can buy this thing by mail order or something like that, he's in for disappointment. My grandfather never sold a game to a person he hadn't met, and neither shall I.'_

"I should write him that. I need to answer to the Ishtal woman and that archaeologist too," Yugi murmured, closing the box. _'Izhisu Ishtal seemed like very strict woman, I think I need be careful when writing the letter to her. I've never written formal letters before. Maybe I should start writing to that __Hopkins__ guy, he seemed nice in his letter… though even so, I will need to meet him before I will do any business with him. The Ishtal woman too…'_

His line of thought was interrupted by a soft hiss coming from Kuriboh. Looking down to the kitten with surprise, Yugi saw that it was staring at the empty spot on the shelf beside the box of the Shadow Realm. Looking at the empty spot for a moment, Yugi frowned, glancing at the kitten. "You can see something I can't, huh Kuriboh?" The kitten continued to hiss.

Turning his eyes back to the empty shelf, Yugi's frown darkened. _'Grandfather did write that humans have poor eyes when it comes to magic. Many animals can see it whilst humans had to develop the famed sixth sense to work with magic. Cats probably can see magic and magical things invisible to human eye, they are after all considered magical on many cultures. They were considered sacred in ancient __Egypt__ for a reason, I guess.'_ He narrowed his eyes. _'But what is Kuriboh seeing, exactly? And how can I see it? I can't even feel it.'_

He thought back to the Magister's Guide, trying to remember anything about turning invisible things visible. He couldn't remember anything. _'Maybe by reversing the invisibility shield? Instead of willing something invisible, willing something visible?'_ He snorted and reached out his hand. Forming a shield around the empty spot was easy enough. _'Reverse the invisibility…'_

Nothing turned actually visible, except for the air which turned strangely grey in the shelf. It left an precisely shaped empty spot in box of grey coloured air, and the shape of that empty spot gave Yugi and idea what the invisible thing was. "It's an imp," he almost laughed. Looking down to still hissing kitten, he smiled. "It's alright, Kuriboh. It's about as harmless as you are."

With a careless motion of his hand, he dissolved the shield he had made. As it unravelled, so did it's effects, turning the air back to it's original colour. Holding his hand out to the seemingly empty shelf, Yugi smiled. "Come on, little guy. It's about time Kuriboh has his dinner, I'll see if we can find something for you." For a moment nothing happened. Then clawed paw touched his palm carefully. When he didn't pull his hand away, the invisible creature climbed up to his shoulder.

While heading back upstairs, Yugi thought back to the Magister's Guide. Sugoroku had written that there had been an imp living somewhere near the Game Shop. Feeding the imp occasionally, the old man had came to understand lot about them, and creatures like them. Imps were small playful creatures with little bit of magic, usually just enough to turn them visible - invisibility was their normal state, as it usually was with monsters and spirits. If humans maltreated the imp, the imp would play tricks on the humans and cause all sorts of trouble. But if humans were good to the imps, the imps acted pretty much like house hold pets.

_'Since this guy got into the house, it doesn't want us or the house any harm. If it did, the wards would've never let it inside,'_ Yugi mused to himself while walking to the kitchen. Setting Kuriboh - who was giving the imp suspicious looks - and the imp down to the floor, he went to get Kuriboh's tiny bowl. Taking another from the cupboard, he fetched the cat food from the frig end filled the bowls. _'It won't do me any harm treating the imp nicely. It's at ease with me, so it has probably interacted with humans before… If I'm lucky, it'll stick around and pay me back by keeping the more harmful monsters and spirits away from the house. Not that they'll be able to get in anyway.'_

After setting the bowls down he watched with mild interest how Kuriboh ate from one and how the food seemed to just vanish from the other. _'I'm really getting used to this magic stuff. I didn't even believe imps were real, now I know they are - among with countless other creatures, all of them invisible to naked human eye. There lives dozens of different races of dragons in this world, but we humans know nothing about it because they too cannot be perceived by our eyes…'_

He leaned his chin to his palm. _'Or maybe we know about them. Fairytales and myths… all originate from times when some spirit or creature trusted human enough to turn visible. Sadly, it's been long long time since then… the monsters of the world know better now. I wonder if they even remember how to turn visible anymore…'_

He turned to look at the letters laying on the table. _'Oh yeah, those. I should start writing back to these people. I'll start with that __Hopkins__ guy…'_

xx

Recent review reminded me of this story's existance and of the fact that I had one chapter I had been witholding because I hadn't managed to write more. Still haven't but I guess it's mean of me to withold the chapter for so long. Currently I'm utterly and comletely preoccupied by my newer story, Yesterday's Lessons, and until that one is finished I don't want to touch my other stories - I don't want to lose the inspiration I have going with that one. I'm not abandoning this one, though. It's just on hiatus until further notice, along with everything else really.

And the "Shadow Realm" game in this one is loosely inspired by Jumanji and Zathura, in case someone is interested


	9. IX Game challenge

**IX chapter**

**Game challenge**

The shop was up and running. At least officially. The papers had been settled, the statement had been given, the whole thing had been finalised. Now Yugi was the more or less proud owner and manager of collector's story specialising in antique games with very specialised clientele. During the procedure of making it all work, Yugi could've poked a dozen holes to the papers of his shop but apparently magic of the shop kept everyone else from noticing them, so all was well.

The fact that the shop was in business didn't revolutionize his life, but it brought slightest changes. It wasn't like Yugi suddenly had to stand behind the counter all day - very few knew about the shop being up for business after all. And considering that most of the shop's customers were abroad… It wasn't exactly busy business, but now that it was up and running, it got a little busier.

More letters came in from his grandfather's former clients and suppliers - and his grandfather had had them all over the world. Archaeologists, history specialists, adventures, even one thief contacted him asking if he was interested in buying some stuff the man had "found". And the clients had also expressed interest. Strangely enough there was only one private collector among them, and that was Mr Hopkins. The others were a strange, rather random bunch of people - business men and company-presidents, politicians and law-officials, even one judge and a casino-owner.

Not all of them had something to buy or sell, though. Most of them were just saying hi and letting him know that they might in some near future be interested about his merchandise and that they would be happy to know if he had something interesting in stock. They also told about the dealings they had made with Yugi's grandfather - to let him know where their interests lied. Only about handful of them had something to sell or buy.

Yugi took his time, but he did answer to them all with letters of his own. He explained the rules of the shop - that he only dealt with people he had met no matter if it was about buying or selling. He also explained that just because they had made business with his grandfather didn't automatically make them his customers or suppliers - if he wouldn't like them he wouldn't make business with them, and that was it. He finished the letters by telling them his phone number in case they had something urgent to talk about - and by apologising for his lack of email for now, since many had asked for it.

But that was about it as far as the business of the shop went. Honestly saying Yugi was busier trying to keep the imp and Kuriboh from attacking each other than he was with the shop. But that was fine. He had other things to do than the shop - his school work, magic studies and he had finally started making his own keeper's record. Since he hadn't gone through the so called rite of passage of a keeper, he had no experience in keeping the records but he kept a positive attitude and hoped that he would get better at it as time would go by. For now he would just write down everything without leaving anything out, that would have to be enough.

His magic studies had also stepped to a new level. He could now make shield about as thick or as thin as he wanted with any shape or quality his mind could make up. With the three first steps mastered, he moved onto the durability. Durability in this case was how long the shield would stay up after he had stopped paying attention to it - right now if he stopped concentrating to the shield, it would vanish and that's it. The new step would help him with that problem. It incorporated a new element to his magic which he had actually been looking forward to - a medium.

All the wards and all the magic that still stuck around the shop were centred on a medium. The wards in the record room had special stones, most of the protections of the shop used the building's foundations as their medium - also the walls, the floors, the ceilings and even the windows worked as mediums for certain spells that still stood strong, protecting the shop. Difference between so called spontaneous and medium-magic was like the difference of a spoken word and a recorded one. The spoken word - and spontaneous magic - vanished as soon as it had been said and done. Recorded word - magic using medium - could be contained and repeated endlessly as long as the recording remained and there was something to play it - as long as the medium was intact and powered.

Glass, surprisingly enough, was the first medium Magister's Guide suggested for him. It had something to do with the fact that most glass was originally sand that had been reshaped by human methods - it made easy to stick magic to it. Glass was good training method, but because glass was rarely durable it wasn't all that useful as serious medium. It was too easy to break.

_"I suggest that you get glass beads, maybe a bracelet or a necklace. That way you can carry large amounts of quick mediums with you all the time. If you ever get attacked by an offensive magician, those beads might just save your life. Medium magic is harder to break than spontaneous magic and whole lot easier to maintain. Also you won't get tired as quickly as you would with a spontaneous shield if instead you have a personal ward using your beads as a medium."_

Yugi bought a simple, suitably black bead bracelet for both of his hands and immediately started to practice with them. The medium magic was easier to activate than he had thought, the beads practically sucked it up. All he really needed to do was to make a shield and then link it to the bead. It took some practice to pinpoint the shield into single bead instead of having the whole bracelet swallow it up but after hours of practice he managed to do it.

Putting the shield into the bead and making the shield specialised was whole another thing, though. The first working medium shield he made only protected his wrist, and was generally rather useless. The second one was larger but when he moved his hand, the shield followed the bead and shifted from over him, leaving him defenceless. He soon realised that he would need to specify the shape and the quality before attaching the shield to the bead - and if he wanted it to be skin-tight, he needed to pay extra caution to make it move with him when he moved. Otherwise it would be just human shaped shield hanging from the bead or, worse yet, a shield that made him unable to move an inch.

Or course it didn't need to be skin tight. Bubble or ball did just as well - though with a ball he had the danger of being forced midair by the shield as it begun protecting him against the ground or floor underneath him. He needed to pay attention onto the height of the shield - and exactly how it was connected to the beads. Otherwise he might've ended up hanging from the bracelet in very uncomfortable and embarrassing manner.

Making wards was much harder than making spontaneous shields, since they only did what they were told and not what he wanted them to. Already Yugi knew that it would take him a while to perfect the warding even when he was just using glass, but he wasn't about to give up. He was eager to add his own protections to guard the shop.

While studying magic Yugi did what he was actually supposed to - study. He went to school every day like good boy - though he ended up spending most of the classes mentally configuring wards rather than calculating or translating or whatever the teachers wanted him to do. Other than that, everything seemed to be normal. Teachers talked, students exchanged notes, recess was commonly spent in some noisy activity and Kaiba was still acting distant, so Yugi supposed that the spirit of the Senet was still dormant.

Bakura, Mazaki, Jonouchi and Honda on other hand were now more or less spying on him. Yugi was half expecting them to one way follow him back to his home after school. It didn't bother him yet, but he knew that if they would really start acting upon their mistrust it would quickly become bothersome.

_'Those four are the weirdest sort of bullies I've ever had,'_ Yugi mused during one biology class, biting his pencil while idly staring up to the blackboard. The teacher was writing something, but he couldn't make out most of the words and having not been listening for the better part of the class, he had hopelessly fallen out of track with the lesson. Not that he cared that much about biology. _'Though they aren't exactly bullies. They're more like those people who stand behind the bullies… the sort of people who watch but do nothing…'_

He glanced up to the ceiling where a light was flickering idly on and off. Then he glanced at the subjects of his musings. _'But if they continue on this line, keeping up their suspicions… they might become bullies. In the beginning at __Tokyo__, back before they became bullies at all, it was like that too. People were suspicious of me - mostly because of my hair. They thought I came from some weird family. They followed me home; found out that I'm just a kid with weird hair… and so on.'_

Taking the pencil from his mouth, he jotted down few random scribbles to look like he was actually taking notes. _'Though I wonder what will be the reason this time. Here people don't seem to care about what I look like as much. So will it be the money? The shop? The fact I live alone?'_ he sighed. After being bullied most of his life, he knew that almost any reason would do for those sort of people. And some needed no reasons at all.

Yugi glanced at Mazaki, who was writing something down to her notebook - actually making notes instead of doodling by the looks of it. She was always diligent student, though, Yugi mused while turning to look at Bakura who apparently was sketching something instead of making notes. He smiled slightly and next glanced at Jonouchi and Honda - Jonouchi looked like he was about to fall asleep and Honda was staring out of the window with absent expression.

Jonouchi and Mazaki were little like the bullies Yugi had had back in Domino. Mazaki was popular and confident; Jonouchi was brash and liked a laugh. Bakura and Honda on other hand didn't seem like the type. Bakura was much too mellow for such passion and Honda, who was the second best in the class just after Kaiba, was much too intelligent for bullying.

_'Maybe they won't. Mazaki seems nice and understanding, I haven't seen her act unkind or cruel towards anyone. Jonouchi is brash and loud but he doesn't seem like bad guy either. He's kind of doglike actually,'_ Yugi smiled little at the thought before turning his eyes to his notebook - which served as host of various random sketches and scribbles, rather than notes. _'Maybe they won't… it certainly would be nice to be able to finish high school without all that trouble.'_

The rest of the class went by similarly, with Yugi barely paying attention and mostly analysing his classmates. By the time the bell rang, sounding the start of recess, he hadn't written any notes of the current subject and had doodled four pages full. Finishing his doodling with a stick-figure Kuriboh, Yugi shut his books and pushed them into his book pack.

While small group of girls dwindled at the door, wondering about whether or not they should head down to the mall after school, he stretched his hands, deciding to stop thinking about his classmates. Time would either run its course and they would soon grow accustomed to him enough to ignore him, or they would actually do something and he could leave the whole worrying behind. Either way, thinking about it not wasn't helping him. There were better things he could be doing, like trying to master magic, make his house guest try and wake up, try and figure out name for his imp… it would make yelling at him and at Kuriboh much easier.

_'Also, getting past my classmates would be nice,'_ Yugi frowned, trying to crane his head to see past the blockage at the door. It didn't look like they were just standing around anymore - there were more people than in the beginning. It now looked like they were gathering at the door. _'Why are they so cluttered there anyway?'_

It was then when he felt it, a shiver down his spine, cold and sharp. It was almost like walking pass a particularly strong cursed game - like the feel he had gotten when he had first seen the Shatranj for the first time. Feel of a hostile game.

He looked up sharply, Yugi glanced around. Magic, at his school... but that couldn't be, right? _'I've been here long enough, I should've already noticed if anyone else here knows magic,'_ he thought, glancing at the blocked door and then walking to the window. His skin crawled just when _Kaiba_ walked past him, and the man was only touched by magic, not magician himself. So, if anyone in the school had any talent, he would've been aware of it by now. And his senses were saying that this feel was more than mere talent with magic - this was magic taking place.

He glanced out of the windows, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary - and when he got closer to them, the feel of magic lessened. That meant two things. One, the source of the feel was near. And two, its effect didn't reach that far…

Blinking, Yugi turned his attention back to the doorway. The people there had grown oddly quiet, only mumbling amongst themselves now. Feeling odd sense of trepidation, Yugi pulled the nearest chair and stood up on it to see over the crowd - only to see that it extended past the doorway and to the hall, which seemed to be filled with people, none of whom were walking. They all just stood there… and even if the students of Domino were odder than those at Tokyo, this wasn't normal for them.

Not knowing exactly what made him think something was wrong - or what made him think there was something he could do - Yugi headed forward. After moment of more careful trying, he pushed past the first students almost roughly before having to push past them with all his might. In complete contrast to what they should've done - which was to shout "watch it" at him and shove him for shoving them - they barely noticed him and barely budged. They stood, stronger and silent, transfixed. Almost like… spellbound.

"What the hell is going on," Yugi muttered, but unnatural quiet had fallen over the students among whom he was struggling and no one answered. Grunting, he pushed deeper into the crowd, which seemed to grow only tighter the deeper he got. It almost felt like wading neck deep in mud, except even more difficult. Yugi wondered if casting a people-repelling shield around him would help him move, when the crowd seemed to give in and he almost fell

He had reached the wall other side the corridor and had almost landed face-first against the notice board. Single glance backwards told him that the other students were staring transfixed at the board, and quickly he looked up as well. His eyes widened in sudden realisation.

There was a poster pinned to the board, over the announcements and notices. It had no writing in it, only a drawing of an extremely complicated maze, drawn in form circle with a triangle inside it. Inside the triangle the lines of the maze formed the shape of an eye that stared down upon the students. As Yugi eyed the maze with mix of confusion and admiration - it was really masterfully done - he felt himself drawn to it.

_'It's almost beautiful,'_ he thought with wonder. His eyes followed the lines, up and down, trying to find the entrance and the exit. _'Hey, maybe I can complete this thing… just follow the path from the entrance to he exit… it's not that complicated, I should be…. able to do it…'_ his eyes traced the lines to the middle, to the eye and he blinked lazily. It almost seemed like it was staring at him. Eye in a maze… it felt almost enchanting…

_'A game!'_ it was more of an instinct born from his studies with the Magister's Guide, than his own knowledge, that snapped him out of the spell. Before he even understood what he had just realised, he had already reached and grabbed hold of the poster. It ripped with confusing ease considering the power it seemed to held, splitting from the middle, breaking the maze in two.

In rush, noise returned to the hall around him as the students around him came to. They seemed confused for a split of a moment before starting to scatter again, some of them looking at each other and asking if their friends had just said something. Yugi looked after them with wonder, not quite sure how they could have not noticed that such large amount of them had been under a spell. _'Shouldn't they notice something's odd about this?'_ he wondered, but the crowd was already scattered, only few lingering about to talk amongst themselves. _'Wow. I guess this is the invisibility of magic…'_

Shaking his head, he turned his eyes down to the ripped half of the poster in his hand. _'A magical game in a piece of paper,'_ he thought with wonder, holding the torn piece of paper and looking at it more closely. It had looked printed before, but now he could see it was hand drawn - or perhaps painted - with black ink. _'Incredible. I thought games needed sturdier material than this to manifest…'_

How did it work? Was the magic in the paper, or in the picture, did the picture itself have meaning? _"Maze of course makes it game magic,_' he thought. _'Enchanted or more likely cursed - enchanted games usually couldn't affect people as directly as this one did. So, a curse. Curse on a piece of paper. And not just that, but a recent curse…'_

Curses needed especially strong containers because they ruined weaker ones. Most cursed games didn't last very long because the curses decayed them - the only reason the Shatranj was in such a good condition was because some of the pieces were made of bone. Paper… paper couldn't last for long. It would disintegrate under even a weak curse within few days.

_'I would've noticed if this had been up for long. And the crowd only started gathering during this recess, not the one before…'_ He looked around. The curse couldn't have been there for longer than an hour. And it was outside _his_ classroom. _'Did someone put it here… deliberately…?'_

He shivered and looked down to the broken game - powerful, complicated, very hard to miss and very fleeting. Like a greeting or maybe a challenge. To him. _'Oh damn,'_ he thought. _'This… is not good.'_

His grandfather had had challengers and he had gone head to head with other magicians occasionally. There had been even few customers and suppliers with whom Sugoroku had _had_ to fight in order to do business with them. Some had for who knows what reason required proof of Sugoroku's strength before they had wanted anything to do with him. And some… some had just wanted to fight with someone competent, period. There weren't so many magicians around these days, after all. And Yugi's family were one of the best around.

_'I… I'm not ready for this. I only opened the shop for business the other day! And I don't know even nearly enough magic to battle - especially not someone who can make something like this…'_ he stared at the broken game. It was just paper and ink and yet it had enchanted a large amount of people in a very short period of time. _'Something as powerful and this in this sort of medium - and they made it without burning the paper outright! How can I… I haven't even had training, half the time I'm reaching out blindly with this magic stuff - I don't even know how to properly use mediums myself, and, and…'_

He almost jumped out of his very bones when a hand touched his shoulder. "Mutou?" voice which he thought sounded vaguely familiar asked. "You okay? You look a little pale, if you don't mind me sayin'…"

It was Jonouchi. Staring up at the taller teen's face in shock, Yugi shook himself out of the other's grasp. "I'm fine," he said, folding the half of the poster hurriedly and pushing it into his pack. "I got a bit of a headache, nothing else."

"Maybe you should go to the nurse's office," Bakura, who was standing near by with Mazaki and Honda, suggested.

"I'm fine," Yugi said and all of sudden realised something. What had been a mere irritating amusement before, wondering about where the interest of these four normal teens would lead, now was illuminated by a totally differently toned light. There was a possibly a hostile magician out there, looking for a fight. What if Mazaki, Jonouchi, Honda and Bakura would be sneaking after him, spying him, and then get caught in between Yugi and that magician - or any other magician of like mind? In danger Yugi could in throw up a shield around himself. What could these people do?

Suddenly the mere notion that these four could be any threat to him was utterly preposterous. Bullies? They were _defenceless_.

"Just…" Yugi started, not sure what to say. Just what, be careful, watch your back, run if you see something odd? They'd think he was a lunatic. "Just leave me alone. I'm fine," he said, and turned to hurriedly leave. He could feel the four giving him a confused look, but ignored it.

He needed to figure out a way to make them less interested about him, he needed to figure out how to fight; he needed to figure out how to protect himself. And fast.

x

Despite all his worries and vigilance, nothing happened for the rest of the school day. He neither saw, heard nor felt another magician near by, no more games were left to trap innocent bystanders, nothing out of ordinary popped up. It was almost as if the maze had never appeared at all, like the day had been perfectly normal and uneventful.

Still, Yugi was hyperaware of everything around him and kept glancing around like deer suspecting he was about to get caught in the head lights. Even once he was on his easy of home he kept looking around, expecting attack at any angle and moment. Yet nothing happened and he eventually reached the warded safety of his home, locking the door tightly behind him and drawing dragged breaths. It felt like he had been running for his life for better part of the day.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered shakily. He wasn't this nervous by nature, was he? He hadn't been this intimidated in years. He knew _magic_ now for heaven's sake, he shouldn't have been so easily shaken… and yet he was. Growling under his breath, he headed up stairs with every intention of attacking the Magister's Guide and skipping ahead few chapters to battle magic. He needed something to work with, something to help him if he would be attacked.

"Not now you two," he snapped at the imp and Kuriboh who had been in middle of a fight and who immediately sought refuge and aid from him, starting to whirl around his legs. Grabbing both of them by the scruff of their necks, he send them out of the kitchen before closing the door and pulling out the Guide with every intention of finding out how to fight.

But the book had very little to offer. All his family's magic was concentrated around shields and that was about it. They had neither neutral, elemental nor offensive magic; no conjuration, no transformation, no teleportation, nothing. That meant no moving telekinesis, no fireballs or arrows or spears of ice, no magical projectiles of any sort. He couldn't make a sword out of nothing, he couldn't turn something into a weapon, and he couldn't even teleport to safety. Only thing he could do… were shields.

How did you fight with a shield alone? Already he had learned from the Magister's guide that shields could fail - with enough strain, any shield eventually fell. That was why the protections of the shop needed enforcing every now and then. And he was still so fresh to magic and so new at using it, that it was a miracle if he'd be able t hold of few good attacks before he would deplete his energy.

For a moment Yugi cursed his family legacy under his breath. What good was it, really, to make a shield alone, but not a sword? He regretted the words almost immediately. His family had survived for three thousand years because of their magic - he had three thousand years worth of legacy to just live _up to_ and he was belittling it as useless? While all around them the world of magic had failed and vanished, they had kept the sacred arts of Egypt itself! He ought to be proud for the magic he had.

Even if it seemed so useless.

Groaning, Yugi ran his hand through his black hair. _'Well, at least I can protect myself,'_ he sighed. _'Little bit is better than nothing at all. Right…'_ Sliding his fingers amongst each other, he leaned his chin to them and tried to think. Shield magic was little use as an offensive, being made solely to be a defence. But there had to be some reason why his grandfather had gained the reputation he had eventually possessed. Sugoroku had had to have _won_ his fights. He had had a pretty long list of formidable business partners, some of them magicians Sugoroku had respected and in some cases even feared. He had had to have won their respect somehow.

_'If he did it, then there is some way,'_ Yugi thought, grasping the thought like a lifeline. _'I just can't see it right yet.'_

For a moment he attempted to try and think like his grandfather would have, but gave it up soon. It was useless - he hadn't known the man after all. Sighing, he lowered his head and closed his eyes for a moment before frowning. _'I am Yugi Mutou, the last Game Magister of Mutou family,'_ he thought to himself. _'I am the descendants of the great priests of __Egypt__, last in long line of magicians entrusted with a task by a pharaoh. I am the guardian and watcher of my family legacy and duty…'_ he opened his eyes and grimaced. "And I'm not a quitter."

No, he wasn't a quitter. He might've been once when there had been nothing in his life worth a damn, when he had had no friends, no future to look forward to, and nothing to make tomorrow any more interesting than the yesterday had been. But these days things were different. He had home, incredible home. He had magic. He had two very interesting pets and a future far greater than he had even fantasised. It was worth _something_. And no matter how his mother had stunted his magical growth and no matter how far behind he was from where he ought to be, he wasn't going to give up on it.

With determination, Yugi slapped the Magister's Guide shut, and instead turned to the bead bracelet hanging loosely around his wrist. _'Medium magic,'_ he thought challengingly. _'You're going down.'_

Pulling the bracelet off, he stood up before sitting down to the floor in meditative position. It would've probably looked ridiculous had anyone been looking, him in his leathers with his chains and bracelets and dyed hair, settling down to meditate. He ignored the thought and held the bracelet between his palms with every intention of making the medium magic work exactly how he needed it to work.

_'Shape. Quality. Strength. Durability,'_ he thought, repeating the thought like a mantra. _'Shape. Quality. Strength. Durability…'_

Two of the bracelet's twenty four beads had broken under the strain and he had exhausted himself to the point of collapse by the time his strength of will finally gave out. Only then he realised that he was hungrier than he remembered being in months, his stomach growling loudly inside him in objection to being ignored for so long. During his meditation, Kuriboh and the imp had apparently also exhausted themselves, for Kuriboh was asleep in his lap and the imp had stretched itself over the windowsill, basking there in the evening sun. The pair of them weren't the only ones who had been moving around him without his notice, Yugi found when he looked up and saw that his stray pets weren't the only company he had.

His surprised eyes met tired eyes in the colour odd shade somewhere between red and deep blue. Only after moment of shocked, almost panicked staring, Yugi's mind registered now utterly familiar features. Short two-coloured hair which he himself had washed and brushed. Face which he had cleaned of two year's worth of dust. Dark skin which even after so long without care - or food - had not aged or withered. Yugi's mouth opened, but no sound came out and for a long while all he could do was stare at the pyjama clad man, who sat on the floor not far from him, leaning exhaustedly to a wall. Fatigued, weary, and still very alert.

His house mate had at last woken up from his dozen years of sleep.

xx

And we're back on business after ages and ages of hiatus, with a mysterious antagonist and, lo and behold, comatose person is awake. Unlike me, who is up at ungodly hour and half asleep after spending most of midnight and beyond writing. Writing is such an easy, balanced and healthy hobby, yes it is, precious.

My apologies for possible grammar errors and such. It's almost three am, I shouldn't even be writing this not to mention about posting it.


End file.
